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THE BOOKS
IN MY LIFE

HENRY MILLER

THE BOOKS
IN MY LIFE

A NEW DIRECTIONS BOOK

Pts)

1123460

New Directions Books are published by James Laughliti
at Norfolk, Connecticut

NEW YORK OFFICE — 333 SIXTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 1 4

' Printed in the Republic of Ireland

LAWRENCE CLARK POWELL

(Librarian of the University of California at Los Angeles)

This is the first of a several-volume work. Included in the
second volume will be a list of all the books Henry Miller can
recall having read. There will also be an index of all literary
references in Henry Miller's works.

CONTENTS

pages

Preface

I. They were Alive and They Spoke

TO Me

3. Early Reading

3. Blaise Cendrars

4. Rider Haggard

5. Jean Giono

100

6. Influences

121

7. Living Books

127

8. The Days of My Life

140

9. Krishnamurti

147

10. The Plains of Abraham

160

II. The Story of My Heart

172

12. Letter to Pierre Lesdain

196

13. Reading in the Toilet

264

14. The Theatre

287

Appendix

The Hundred Books

317

Books I Still Intend to Read

320

Friends Who Supplied Me

with

Books

321

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Henry Miller in ms Frontispiea
Studio

facing page

Blaise Cendrars 6i

The Xerxes Socibty 126

The Miller Family 288

QUOTATIONS FROM WRITERS

** All I have written now appears to me as so much straw."
(Thomas Aquinas on his deathbed.)

"When the artist has exhausted his materials, when the faney
no longer paints, when thoughts are no longer apprehended, and
books are a weariness — he has always the resource to live.**

(Ralph Waldo Emerson.)

** All is marvellous for the poet, all is divine for the saint, all is
great for the hero ; all is wretched, miserable, ugly and bad for the
base and sordid souL"

(Amiel.)

" Probably, even in our time, an artist might find his imagination
considerably stimulated and his work powerfiilly improved if he
knew that anything short of his best would bring him to the gallows,
with or without trial by jury ..."

(Henry Adams.)

" Apr^ avoir pris un an de vacances (15 sept. '49 — 15 sept. '50),
me marier, un peu voyager en Suisse, Luxembourg, HoUande,
Angleterre, Belgique, soigner mes yeux, faire trois mois de radio,
d^m^nager, me r^installer ^ Paris— je me suis remis au travail,
h^las ! . . . Petit k petit je vais m*enfoncer dans cet univers qui
contient tous les autres comme une goutte d'eau des myriades dc
microbes, la goutte d'encre qui coule de la plume . . . C*est
extraordinaire . . . et je n arrive pas k m*y habituer ni . . . ^ y
croire ! "

(Blaise Cendrars in a letter dated Sept. 16, 1950.)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To the World Review^ London, for permission to reprint the
chapter on Blaise Cendrars ; to Survival, New York, for the chapter
on Rider Haggard.

Grateful acknowledgment is herewith made to the following publishers
and individuals for their kind permission to quote from the following
works:

Blackie & Son Ltd., for Life of G. A. Henty by G. Melville Fenn.

Borden Publishing Co., for The History of Magic by EHphas Levi.

Coward-McCann, Inc., for Hill of Destiny by Jean Giono.

C. W. Daniel Co., Ltd., for The Absolute Collective by Erich Gudcind.

James Ladd Delkin for Zen by Alan W. Watts.

Doubleday & Co., Inc., for The Story of My Life by Helen Keller.

Druid Press for The Obstinate Cytnric by J. C. Powys.

E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., for Cosmic Conscioustiess by R. M. Bunche
and Magicians, Seers and Mystics by Maurice Magre.

Editions Bernard Grasset for Moravagine by Blaise Cendrars.

Falcon Press for Babu of Montpamasse by C. L. PhiHppe.

Harcourt, Brace & Co., Inc., for In Search of the Miraadous by P. D.
Ouspensky.

Hermann Hesse for his article which appeared in Horizon, Sept., 1946.

Houghton Mifflin Co., & Constable & Co., Ltd., for Mont Saint
Michel and Chartres by Henry Adams.

Henry Holt & Co., Inc., for Nature and Man by Paul Weiss.

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., for Men of Good Will by Jules Romain.

John Lane The Bodley Head for Autobiography by J. C. Powys.

Frieda Lawrence for Studies in Classic American Literature, and
Apocalypse— hotk by D. H. Lawrence.

Le Cercle Du Livre for Krishnamurti by Carlo Suar^.

Les J^tions Denoel for Le Lotissement du Ciel and Bourlinguer--
both by Blaise Cendrars.

Litde, Brown & Co., for Schliemann by Emil Ludwig.

Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., and A. P. Watt & Son for The Days
of My Life by H. Rider Haggard.

The Macmillan Co., for Dostoievsky by Janko Lavrin.

W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., for The Great Age of Greek Literature

by Edith Hamilton.
J. C. Powys for his book Visions and Revisions.
Random House for Deems Taylor's introduction to Peter Ibbetson

and for Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill.
Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd., for Politics of the Unpolitical by

Herbert Read.
Sylvan Press Ltd., for From Puskin toMayakovsky by Janko Lavrin.
W. T. Symonds for an article by Erich Gutkind in Purpose, 1947.
The Viking Press Inc., for Joy of Mans Desiring and Blue Boy— both

by Jean Giono, and the Portable Sherwood Anderson.

CREDIT FOR PHOTOS

1. Henry Miller in Studio, Big Sur (1950) by Flair, New York.

2. Blaise Cendrars (1950) by Robert Doisneau, Montrouge,
France.

3. Xerxes Society.

4. Miller Family Portrait by Pach Bros., New York (circa
1902-03).

PREFACE

The purpose of this book, which will run to several volumes in
the course of the next few years, is to round out the story of my
life. It deals with books as vital experience. It is not a critical
study nor does it contain a program for self-education.

One of the results of this self-examination — for that is what the
writing of this book amounts to — is the confirmed belief that one
should read less and less, not more and more. As a glance at the
Appendix will reveal, I have not read nearly as much as the scholar,
the bookworm, or even the " well-educated " man — yet I have
undoubtedly read a hundred times more than I should have read
for my own good. Only one out of five in America, it is said,
are readers of " books." But even this small number read far too
much. Scarcely any one lives wisely or fiilly.

There have been and always will be books which are truly revolu-
tionary— that is to say, inspired and inspiring. They are few and
fiir between, of course. One is lucky to run across a handfiil in
a Ufetime. Moreover, these are not the books which invade the
general pubHc. They, are thei hidden reservoirs which feed the
men of lesser talent who know how to appeal to the man in the
street. The vast body of Hterature, in every domain, is composed
of hand-me-down ideas. The question — ^never resolved, alas ! —
is to what extent it would be efficacious to curtail the overwhelming
supply of cheap fodder. One thing is certain today — the illiterate
are definitely not the least inteUigctit among us.

i If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better .

! go direct to the source. . And the source is not the scholar or philo- j \
sopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but Ufe itself— direct !
experience of life. ■ The same is true for art. Here, too, we can
dispense with ** the masters.** When I say life I have in mind, to
be sure, another kind of hfe than that we know today. I have in
mind the sort which D. H. Lawrence speaks of in Etruscan Places.*

* Published by Martin Seeker, London, 1932. See page? 88-93.

PREFACE

Or that Henry Adams speaks of when the Virgin reigned supreme
at Chartres.

In tliis age, which beHeves that there is a short cut to everything,
the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is,
in the long run, the easiest. All that is set forth in books, all that
seems so terribly vital and significant, is but an iota of that from
which it stems and which it is within everyone's power to tap.
Our whole theory of education is based on the absurd notion that
we must learn to swim on land before tackling the water. It applies
to the pursuit of the arts as well as to the pursuit of knowledge.
Men are still being taught to create by studying other men's works
or by making plans and sketches never intended to materialize.
The ait of writing is taught in the classroom instead of in the thick
of hfe. Students are still being handed models which are supposed
to fit all temperaments, all kinds of intelligence. No wonder we
produce better engineers than writers, better industrial experts
than painters.

My encounters with books I regard very much as my encounters
with other phenomena of Hfe or thought. All encounters are con-
figurate, not isolate. In this sense, and in this sense only, books
are as much a part of Ufe as trees, stars or dung. I have no reverence
for them per se. Nor do I put authors in any special, privileged
category. They are Uke other men, no better, no worse. They
exploit the powers given them, just as any other order of human
being. If I defend them now and then — as a class — ^it is because
I beheve that, in our society at least, they have never achieved the
status and the consideration they merit. The great ones, especially,
have almost always been treated as scapegoats.

To see myself as the reader I once was is Hke watching a man
fighting his way through a jungle. To be sure, living in the heart
of the jungle I learned a few things about the jungle. But my aim
was never to live in the jungle — ^it was to get clear of it ! It is my
firm conviction that it is not necessary to first inhabit this jungle
of books. Life itself is enough of a jungle — a very real and a very
instructive one, to say the least. But, you ask, may not books be a
help, a guide, in fighting our way through the wilderness ? " N'ira
pas loin," said Napoleon, " celui qui sait d'avance ou il veut aller.**

The principal aim underlying this work is to render homage

PREFACE

where homage is due, a task which I know beforehand is impossible
of accompHshment. Were I to do it properly, I would have to get
down on my knees and thank each blade of grass for rearing its
head. What chiefly motivates me in this vain task is the fact that
in general we know all too little about the influences which shape
a writer's Hfe and work. The critic, in his pompous conceit and
arrogance, distorts the true picture beyond all recognition. The
author, however truthful he may think himself to be, inevitably
disguises the picture. The psychologist, with his single-track view
of things, only deepens the blur. As author, I do not think myself
an exception to the rule. I, too, am guilty of altering, distorting
and disguising the facts — if " facts " there be. My conscious eflbrt,
however, has been — perhaps to a fault — in the opposite direction.
I am on the side of revelation, if not always on the side of beauty,
truth, wisdom, harmony and ever-evolving perfection. In this
work I am throwing out fresh data, to be judged and analyzed,
or accepted and enjoyed for enjoyment's sake. Naturally I cannot
write about all the books, or even all the significant ones, which
I have read in the course of my life. But I do intend to go on writing
about books and authors until I have exhausted the importance
(for me) of this domain of reaUty.

To have undertaken the thankless task of listing all the books
I can recall ever reading gives me extreme pleasure and satisfaction.
I know of no author who has been mad enough to attempt this.^
Perhaps my Hst will give rise to more confusion — but its purpose
is not that. Those who know how to read a man know how to read
his books. For these the Hst will speak for itself

In writing of the " amoraUsme " of Goethe, Jules de Gaultier,
quoting Goethe, I beUeve, says : "La vraie nostalgic doit toujours
etre productrice et cr^er une nouvelle chose qui soit meilleure."
At the core of this book there is a genuine nostalgia. It is not a
nostalgia for the past itself, as may sometimes appear to be the
case, nor is it a nostalgia for the irretrievable ; it is a nostalgia for
moments Uved to the fullest. These moments occurred sometimes
through contact with books, sometimes through contact with
men and women I have dubbed ** Uving books." Sometimes it is a
nostalgia for the companionship of those boys I grew up with and
with whom one of the strongest bonds I had was — books. (Yet

PREFACE

here I must confess that, however bright and revivifying these
memories, they are as nothing to the remembrance of days spent
in the company of my former idols-in-the-flesh, those boys — ^still
boys to me ! — who went by the immortal names of Johnny Paul,
Eddie Carney, Lester Reardon, Johnny and Jimmy Dunne, none
of whom did I ever sec with a book or associate with a book in
the remotest way.) Whether it was Goethe who said it or de Gaul-
tier, I too most firmly beUeve that true nostalgia must always be
productive and conducive to the creation of new and better things.
If it were merely to rehash the past, whether in the form of books,
persons or events, my task would be a vain and fiitile one. Cold
and dead as it may now seem, the list of titles given in the
Appendix may prove for some kindred souls to be the key
with which to unlock their living moments of joy and plenitude
in the past. ^

One of the reasons I bother to write a preface, which is always
something of a bore to the reader, one of the reasons I have rewritten
it for the fifth and, I hope, the last time, is the fear that its completion
may be frustrated by some unforeseen event. This first volume
finished, I have immediately to set to work to write the third and
last book of The Rosy Crucifixion, the hardest task I ever set
myself and one which I have avoided for many a year. I would
like, therefore, while time permits, to give a hint of some
of the things I planned or hoped to write about in succeeding
volumes.

Naturally, I had some sort of flexible plan in mind when I began
this work. Unlike the architect, however, an author often discards
his blueprint in the process of erecting his edifice. To the writer
a book is something to be hved through, an experience, not a plan
to be executed in accordance with laws and specifications. At any
rate, whatever is left of my original plan has grown tenuous and
complicated as a spider's web. It is only in bringing this volume
to a close that I have come to realize how much I wish to say, and
have to say, about certain authors, certain subjects, some of which
I have already touched upon.* For example, no matter how often

* An American whose influence I may have minimized is Jack London.
Glancing through his Essays of Revolt, edited by Leonard D. Abbott, I recalled
the great thrill it gave me, a boy of fourteen, to merely hear the name Jofk

PREP ACB

I refer to him I have never said, and probably never will say, all

that I mean to say about Elie Faure. Nor have I by any means

exhausted the subject of Blaise Cendrars. And then there is Celine,

a giant among our contemporaries, whom I have not even begun

to approach. As for Rider Haggard, I shall certainly have more

to say about him, in particular, his Ayesha, the sequel to She^. When

it comes to Emerson, Dostoievsky, Maeterlinck, Knut Hamsim,

G. A. Henty. I know I shall never say my last word about them. \/

A subject like The Grand Inquisitor, for example, or The Eterttal

Husband— my favorite of all Dostoievsky's works — would seem to j "p

demand separate books in themselves. Perhaps when I come to i

Berdyaev and that great flock of exalted Russian writers of the

Nineteenth century, the men with the eschatological flair, I shall

get roimd to saying some of the things I have been wanting to say

for twenty years or more. Then there is the Marquis de Sade, one

of the most maligned, defamed, misunderstood — deliberately and

wilfully misunderstood — figures in all Htcrature. Time I came to

grips with him ! Back of him and overshadowing him stands the

figure of Gilles de Rais, one of the most glorious, sinister, enigmatic

figures in all European history. In the letter to Pierre Lesdain I

said I had not yet received a good book on Gilles de Rais. In the '

meantime a fiiend has sent me one firom Paris, and I have read it.

Loitdori. To us who hungered for life he was a shining light, adored as
much for his revolutionary fervor as for his wild, adventurous life. How
strange now to read, ia Leonard Abbott's Introduction, that in the year
1905 (0 J^ck London was proclaiming : " The revolution is here now^.
Stop it who can ! " How strange now to read the opening words of his
famous speech on " Revolution," which he delivered to university students
throughout America — how did it ever happen f — ^telling of the seven million
men and women then enrolled throughout the world in the army of revolt.
Listen to Jack London's words :

** There has never been anything like this revolution in the history of the
world. There is nothing analogous between it and the American Revolution
or the French Revolution. It is unique, colossal. Other revolutions compare
with it as asteroids compare with the sun. It is alone of its kind, the first
world revolution in a world whose history is replete with revolutions. And
not only this, for it is the first organized movement of men to become a
world movement, limited only by the limits of the planet. This revolution
is unlike all other revolutions in many respects. It is not sporadic. It is not
a flame of popular discontent, arising in a ^y and dying down in a day . . ."

One of the first Americans, I presume, to make a fortune with the pen.
Jack London resigned firom the Socialist Party in 1916, accusing it of lacking
fire and fight. One wonders what he would say today, were he alive, about
" the devolution."

PREFACE

It is just the book I was looking for ; it is called Gilles de Rais et
son temps by George Meunier*

Here are a few more books and authors I intend to dwell on in
the future : Algernon Blackwood, author of The Bright Messenger^
to my mind the most extraordinary novel on psychoanalysis, one
which dwarfs the subject ; The Path to Rome, by Hilaire Belloc,
an early favorite and a steadfast love : each time I read the opening
pages, ** Praise of This Book," I dance with joy ; Marie CoreUi,
a contemporary of Rider Haggard, Yeats, Tennyson, Oscar Wilde,
who said of herself in a letter to the vicar of the parish church at
Stratford-on-Avon : " With regard to the Scriptures, I do not
think any woman has ever studied them so deeply and devoutly as
I have, or, let me say, more deeply and devoutly." I shall certainly
write about Rene Caill^, the first white man to enter Timbuctoo
and get out ahve ; his story, as related by Galbraith Welch in The
Unueiling of Timbuctoo, is to my mind the greatest adventure story
in modem times. And Nostradamus, Janko Lavrin, Paul Brunton,
Peguy, Ouspensky's In Search of tlie Miraculous, Letters from the
Mahatmas, Fechner's Life After Death, Claude Houghton's meta-
physical novels, Cyril Connolly's Enemies of Promise (another book
about books), the language of night, as Eugene Jolas calls it, Donald
Keyhoe's book on the flying saucers, cybernetics and dianetics,
the importance of nonsense, the subject of resurrection and ascension,
and, among other things, a recent book by Carlo Suares (the same
who wrote on Krishnamurti), entitled Le Mythc Judeo-Chritien.

I shall also — " why not ? " as Picasso says — expatiate on the subject
of ** pornography and obscenity " in Uterature. In fact, I have
already written quite a few pages on this theme, which I have
held over for the second volume. Meanwhile I am very much in
need of authentic data. I should like to know, for example, what
are the great pornographic books of all time. (I know but a very

* In Paris, about 1931 or 1932, Richard Thoma gave me a copy of his book
on Gilles de Rais, called Tragedy in Blue. A few weeks ago I received a
reprint of this book, published as an anonymous work and entitled The
Authorized Version — Book Three — The Book of Sapphire. Rereading it, I
was overcome with mortification that I could have forgotten the power
and the splendor of this work. It is a poetic justification, I might almost,
say, or paean or dithyramb, only fifty-one pages long, unique in its genre,
and true as only highly imaginative works can be. It is a breviary for the
initiated. Apologies and congratulations, Dicko !
16

PREFACE

few.) who are the writers who arc still regarded as *' obscene " ?
How widely are their books circulated and where chiefly ? In
what languages ? I can think of only three great writers whose
works are still banned in England and America, and then only
certain of their works, not all. I mean the Marquis de Sade (whose
most sensational work is still banned in France), Aretino and D. H.
Lawrence. What of Restif de la Bretonne, concerning whom
an American, J. Rives Childs, has compiled (in French) a formidable
tome of ** t^moignages et jugements " ? And what about that
first pornographic novel in the English language. The Memoirs
of Fanny Hill ? Why, if it is so " dull," has it not become a ** classic "
by now, free to circulate in drug stores, railway stations and other
innocent places ? It is just two hundred years since it first appeared,
and it has never gone out of print, as every American tourist in
Paris well knows.

Curious, but of all the books I was searching for while writing
this first volume, the two I wanted most have not turned up :
The Thirteen Crucified Saviours, by Sir Godfi-ey Higgins, author
of the celebrated Atiacalypsis, and Les Clifs de V Apocalypse, by
O. V. Milosz, the Polish poet who died not long ago at Fontaine-
bleau. Nor have I yet received a good book on the Children's
Crusades.

There are three magazines I forgot to mention when speaking of
good magazines : Jugend, The Enemy (edited by that amazing,
bright spirit, Wyndham Lewis), and The Masque of Gordon Craig.

And now a word about the man to whom this book is dedicated
— Lawrence Clark Powell. It was on one of his visits to Big Sur
that this individual, who knows more about books than any one
I have ever had the good fortune to meet, suggested that I write
(for him if for no one else) a short book about my experience with
books. Some months later the germ, which had always been
dormant, took hold. After writing about fifty pages I knew that
I could never rest content with a summary account of the subject.
Powell knew it too, no doubt, but he was cunning or discreet
enough to keep it to himself. I owe Larry Powell a great deal.

r one thing, and it is a big thing to me because it means the

rrection of a false attitude, I owe him my present ability to view
hbrarians as human beings, very Hve human beings, sometimes,

PR EPA C

and capable of proving dynamic forces in our midst. Certainly
no librarian could be more zealous than he in making books a
vital part of our life, which they are not at present. Nor could any
librarian have given me greater direct aid than he. Not a single
question have I put to him which he has not answered fully and
scrupulously. No request of any sort, in fact, has he ever turned
down. Should this book prove to be a failure it will not be his
feult.

Here I must add a few words about other individuals who
extended their aid in one way or another. First and foremost,
Dante T. Zaccagnini of Port Chester, New York. You, Dante,
whom I have never met, how can I express to you my deep gratitude
for all the arduous labors you performed — and voluntarily ! — on
my behalf i I blush to think what humdrum tasks some of them
were. In addition you insisted on making me gifts of some of
your most precious books — ^because you thought I had more need
of them than you ! And what helpfid suggestions you made, vi^t
subtle corrections ! All done with discretion, tact, humility and
devotion. Words fail me.

It should be undentood that when I began this task there were,
I felt, several hundred books which I needed to borrow or to own.
My only recourse, not having the money to buy them, was to
make up a list of titles and disseminate it among my friends and
acquaintances — and, among my readers. The men and women
whose names I have given at the close of this volume suppHed me
with my wants. Many of these were simply readers whom I got to
know through correspondence. The " friends " who could most
afford to send me the books I so sorely needed, and whom I counted
upon, failed to come through. An experience of this sort is always
illuminating. The friends who fail you are always replaced by
new ones who appear at the critical moment and from the most
unexpected quarten. . .

One of the few rewards an author obtains for his labors is the
conversion of a reader into a warm, personal friend. One of the
rare deHghts he experiences is to receive exactly the gift he was
waiting for from an unknown reader. Every sincere writer has,
I take it, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such unknown friends
among his readers. There may be, and doubtless arc, authors who
i8

PREFACE

have little need of their readers except as purchasers of their books.
My case is somewhat different. I have need of every one. I am a
borrower and a lender. I make use of any and all who volunteer
their aid. I would be ashamed not to accept these gracious over-
tures. The latest one was from a student at Yale, Donald A. Schon.
In filing a letter of mine to Professor Henri Peyre of the French
Department there, a letter in which I had made an appeal for clerical
help, this young man read my letter and spontaneously offered his
services. (A grand gesture ! Sehr Schon !)

A case in point is the fortuitous emergence of John Kidis of
Sacramento. A request for a signed photograph led to a brief
interchange of letters followed by a visit and a shower of gifts.
John Kidis (originally Mestakidis) is a Greek, whidi explains mudi.
But it doesn't explain everything. I dont know which I appreciate
the more, the armfiils of books (some of them very difficult to find)
which he dumped on my desk or the never-ceasing flow of gifts,
viz., sweaters and socks of pure wool and nylon, knitted by his
mother, trousers, caps, and other articles of clothing picked up
here and there, Greek pastries (such deHcious deHcacies !) prepared
by his grandmother or his aunt, tins of Halva, jugs of rezina, toys
for the children, writing materials (paper, envelopes of all kinds,
post cards with my name and address printed on them, carbon
paper, pencils, blotters), circulars and announcements, baptismal
towels (his father is a priest), dates and nuts of all kinds, firesh figs,
oranges, apples, even pomegranates (all from the mythical " farm "),
to say nothing of the typing he did for me, or the printing {Tfie
Waters RegUtterized, for example), the water colors he bought,
the paper and paints he supplied me with, the errands he volunteered
to run, the books he sold for me (throwing out all his other stock-
in-trade and setting himself up as ** The House of Henry Miller "),
the tires he bought for me, the music he offered to get me (records,
sheet music, albums), and so on and so on ad infinitum. . . . How
is one to account for such generosity ? How ever repay it ?

It goes without saying, I trust, that I shall welcome from the
readers of tliis book any and all indications of error, omission,
falsification or misjudgment. I am well aware that this book, because
it is " about books," will go to many who have never read me
before, I hope that they will spread the good word, not abotn

PREFACE

this book, but about the books they love. Our world is rapidly
drawing to a close ; a new one is about to open. If it is to flourish
it will have to rest on deeds as well as faith. The word will have to
become flesh.

There are few among us today who are able to view the immediate
future with anything but fear and apprehension. If there is one book
among all those I have recendy read which I might signal as con-
taining words of comfort, peace, inspiration and sublimity, it is
Henry Adams' Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartrfs. Particularly the
chapters dealing with Chartres and the cult of the Virgin Mary.
Every reference to the " Queen ** is exalted and commanding. Let
me quote a passage — page 194* — which is in order :

There she acttially is — ^not in symbol or in fancy, but in
penon, descending on her errands of mercy and listening
to each one of us, as her miracles prove, or satisfying our
prayers merely by her presence which calms our excite-
ment as that of a mother calms her child. She is there as
Queen, not merely as intercessor, and her power is such
that to her the difierence between us earthly beings is
nothing. Pierre Mauclerc and PhiHppe Hurepel and their
men-at-arms are afraid of her, and the Bishop himself is
never quite at his ease in her presence ; but to peasants,
and beggars, and people in trouble, this sense of her power
and caJm is better than active sympathy. People who
sufi*er beyond the formulas of expression — ^who are crushed
into silence, and beyond pain — ^want no display of emotion
— ^no bleeding heart — ^no weeping at the foot of the Cross
— ^no hysterics — ^no phrases ! They want to see God, and to
know that He is watching over His own.

There are writers, such as this man, who enrich us — and others
who impoverish us. However it be, there is all the while a more
important thing going on. All the while, whether we enrich or
impoverish, we who write, we authors, we men of letters, we
scribblers, are being supported, protected, maintained, enriched
and endowed by a vast horde of unknown individuals — the men
and women who watch and pray, so to speak, that we reveal the
truth which is in us. How vast this multitude is no man knows.
No one artist has ever reached the whole great throbbing mass

*^From the Houghton, Mifflin Co. edition, Boston and New York, 1933.
20

PREFACE

of humanity. We swim in the same stream, we drink from the
same source, yet how often or how deeply are we aware, we who
write, of the common need i If to write books is to restore what
we have taken from the granary of Hfe, from sisters and brothers
unknown, then I say : " Let us have more books ! "

In the second volume of this work I shall write, among other
things, of Pornography and Obscenity, Gilles de Rais, Haggard's
Ayesha, Marie CorelH, Dostoievsky's Grand Inquisitor, C^Hne,
Maeterlinck, Berdyaev, Claude Houghton and Malaparte. The
index of all references to all books and authors cited in all of my
books will be included in the second volume.

HENRY MILLER.

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

I SIT in a little room, one wall of which is now completely lined
with books. It is the first time I have had the pleasure of working
with anything like a collection of books. There are probably no
more than five hundred in all, but for the most part they represent
my own choice. It is the first time, since I began my writing career,
that I am surrounded with a goodly number of the books I have
always longed to possess. The fact, however, that in the past I
did most of my work without the aid of a Hbrary I look upon as
an advantage rather than a disadvantage.

One of the first things I associate with the reading of books is
the struggle I waged to obtain them. Not to own them, mind you,
but to lay hands on them. From the moment the passion took
hold of me I encountered nothing but obstacles. The books I
wanted, at the pubUc Hbrary, were always out. And of course I
never had the money to buy them. To get permission from the
Hbrary in my neighborhood — I was then eighteen or nineteen
years of age— to borrow such a ** demoralizing " work as The
Confession of a Fool, by Strindberg, was just impossible. In those
days the books which young people were prohibited from reading
were decorated with stars — one, two or three — according to the
degree of immoraHty attributed to them. I suspect this procedure
still obtains. I hope so, for I know of nothing better calculated to
whet one's appetite than this stupid sort of classification and
prohibition.

What makes a book live ? How often this question arises ! The
answer, in my opinion, is simple. A book Hves through the pas-
sionate recommendation of one reader to another. Nothing can
throttle this basic impulse in the human being. Despite the views
of cynics and misanthropes, it is my beHef that men will always
strive to share their deepest experiences.

Books are one of the few things incn cherish deeply. And the
32

TttBY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO MH

better the man the more easily will he part with his most cherished
possessions. A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunirion.
Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend
and borrow to the maximum — of both books and money ! But
especially books, for books represent infinitely more than money.
A book is not only a fiiend, it makes friends for you. When you
have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched.
But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

Here an irrepressible impulse seizes me to offer a piece of
gratuitous advice. It is this : read as Uttle as possible, not as much
as possible ! Oh, do not doubt that I have envied those who drowned
themselves in books. I, too, would secretly Hke to wade through
all those books I have so long toyed with in my mind. But I know
it is not important. I know now that I did not need to read even
a tenth of what I have read. The most difficult thing in Ufe is to
learn to do only what is strictly advantageous to one's welfare,
strictly vital.

There is an excellent way to test this precious bit of advice I have
not given rashly. When you stumble upon a book you would
like to read, or think you ought to read, leave it alone for a few
days. But think about it as intensely as you can. Let the title and
the author's name revolve in your mind. Think what you yourself
might have written had the opportunity been yours. Ask yourself
earnestly if it be absolutely necessary to add this work to your
store of knowledge or your fund of enjoyment. Try to imagine
what it would mean to forego this extra pleasure or erdightenment.
Then, if you find you must read the book, observe with what
extraordinary acumen you tackle it. Observe, too, that however
stimulating it may be, very Httle of the book is really new to you.
If you are honest with yourself you will discover that your stature
has increased from the mere effort of resisting your impulses.

Indubitably the vast majority of books overlap one another.
Few indeed are those which give the impression of originality,
either in style or content. Rare are the unique books — ^less than
fifiy, perhaps, out of the whole storehouse of Hterature. In one of
his recent autobiographical novels, Blaise Cendrars points out
that R^my de Gourmont, because of his knowledge and awareness
of this repetitive quaUty in books, was able to select and read all

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

that is worth while in the entire reahn of literature, Cendrars
himself— who would suspect it ?— is a prodigious reader. He reads
most authors in their original tongue. Not only that, but when
he Ukes an author he reads every last book the man has written,
as well as his letters and all the books that have been written about
him. In our day his case is almost unparalleled, I imagine. For,
not only has he read widely and deeply, but he has himself written
a great many books. All on the side, as it were. For, if he is any-
thing, Cendrars, he is a man of action, an adventurer and explorer,
a man who has known how to "waste** his time royally. He
is, in a sense, the JuHus Caesar of Hterature.

The other day, at the request of the French publisher, Gallimard,
I made up a Hst of the hundred books* which I thought had
influenced me most. A strange list, indeed, containing such incon-
gruous titles as Peck*s Bad Boy, Letters from the Mahatmas and Pitcaim
Island. The first named, a decidedly " bad " book, I read as a boy.
I thought it worth including in my list because no other book
ever made me laugh so heartily. Later, in my teens, I made periodical
trips to the local hbrary to paw the books on the shelf labelled
" Humor.** How few I found which were really humorous !
This is the one realm of Uterature which is woefully meagre and
deficient. After citing Huckleberry Finn, The Crock of Gold, Lysis-
trata. Dead Souls, two or three of Chesterton's works, and Juno
and the Paycock, I am hard put to it to mention anything outstanding
in this category of humor. There are passages in Dostoievsky and
in Hamsun, it is true, which still bring tean of laughter to my eyes,
but they are only passages. The professional humorists, and their
names are legion, bore me to death. Books on humor, such as
Max Eastman*s, Arthur Koestler*s, or Bergson's, I also find deadly.
It would be an achievement, I feel, if I could write just one humorous
book before I die. The Chinese, incidentally, possess a sense of
humor which is very close, very dear, to me. Particularly their
poets and philosophers.

In books for children, which influence us the most— I mean
fiiiry tales, legends, myths, allegories— humor is, of course, woefully
absent. Horror and tragedy, lust and cruelty, seem to be the cardinal
ingredients. But it is through the reading of these boob that the

* See Appendix.
24 /

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO MB

imaginative faculty is nourisheci. As we grow older, fantasy and
imagination become increasingly rare to find. One is carried along
on a treadmill which grows increasingly monotonous. The mind
becomes so dulled that it takes a truly extraordinary book to rout
one out of a state of indifference or apathy.

With childhood reading there is a factor of significance which we
arc prone to forget — the physical ambiance of the occasion. How
distinctly, in after years, one remembers the feel of a favorite book,
the typography, the binding, the illustrations, and so on. How easily
one can locaHze the time and place of a first reading. Some books
are associated with illness, some with bad weather, some with
punishment, some with reward. In the remembrance of these
events the inner and outer worlds fiise. These readings are distinctly
" events " in one's life.

There is one thing, moreover, which differentiates the reading
done in childhood firom later reading, and that is the absence of
choice. The books one reads as a child arc thrust upon one. Lucky
the child who has wise parents ! So powerful, however, is the
dominion of certain books that even the ignorant parent can hardly
avoid them. What child has not read Sinhad the Sailor, Jason and
the Golden Fleece, All Baba and the Forty Thieves, the Fairy Tales
of Grimm and Andersen, Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and
such like i

Who also, I ask, has not enjoyed the uncanny thrill which comes
later in life on rereading his early favorites ? Only recently, after
the lapse of almost fifty years, I reread Henty's Lion of the North.
What an experience ! As a boy, Henty was my favorite author.
Every Christmas my parents would give me eight or ten of his
books. I must have read every blessed one before I was fourteen.
Today, and I regard this as phenomenal, I can pick up any book
of his and get the same fascinating pleasure I got as a boy.
He does not seem to be ** talking down " to his reader. He seems,
rather, to be on intimate terms with him. Everyone knows, I
presume, that Henty*s books arc historical romances. To the lads
of my day they were vitally important, because they gave us our
first perspective of world history. The Lion of the North, for instance,
is about Gustavus Adolphus and the Thirty Years* War. In it
appears that strange, enigmatic figure— Wallenstein. When, just

The books in my lif£

the other day, I came upon the pages dealing with Wallenstein,
it was as though I had read them only a few months ago. As I
remarked in a letter to a friend, after closing the book, it was in
these pages about Wallenstein that I first encountered the words
" destiny *' and " astrology." Pregnant words, for a boy. at any
rate.

I began by speaking of my " hbrary." Only lately I had the
pleasure of reading about the Hfe and times of Montaigne. Like
ours, his was an age of intolerance, persecution, and wholesale
massacres. I had often heard, to be sure, of Montaigne's withdrawal
from active Hfe, of his devotion to books, of his quiet, sober life,
so rich in inward ways. There, of course, was a man who could
be said to possess a Hbrary ! For a moment I envied him. If, I
thought to myself, I could have in this Uttle room, right at my
elbow, all the books which I cherished as a child, a boy, a young
man, how fortunate I would be ! It was always my habit to mark
excessively the books I liked. How wonderful it would be, thought
I, to see those markings again, to know what were my opinions
and reactions in that long ago. I thought of Arnold Bennett, of
the excellent habit he had formed of inserting at the back of every
book he read a few blank pages whereon he might record his notes
and impressions as he went along. One is always curious to know
what one was like, how one behaved, how one reacted to thoughts
and events, at various periods in the past. In the marginal annota-
tions of books one can easily discover one's former selves.

When one realizes the tremendous evolution of one's being which
occurs in a lifetime one is bound to ask : " Does life cease vwth
bodily death i Have I not Hved before ? Will I not appear again
on earth or perhaps on some other planet i Am I not truly imperish-
able, as is all else in the universe t " Perhaps, too, one may be
impelled to ask himself a still more important question : " Did I
learn my lesson liere on earth ? "

Montaigne, I noticed with pleasure, speaks frequently of his
bad memory. He says that he was unable to recall the contents,
or even his impressions, of certain books, many of which he had
read not once but several times. I feel certain, however, that he
must have had a good memory in other respects. Most everyone
has a faulty, spotty memory. The men who can quote copiously
26 /

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO Ml

and accurately from the thousands of books they have read, who
can relate the plot of a novel in detail, who can give names and
dates of historical events, and so on, possess a monstrous sort of
memory which has always seemed repellent to me. I am one of
those who have a weak memory in certain respects and a strong
one in others. In short, just the kind of memory which is useful
for me. When I really wish to recall something I can, though it
may take considerable time and effort. I know quietly that nothing
is lost. But I know also that it is important to cultivate a " forget-
tery." The flavor, the savor, the aroma, the ambiance, as well
as the value or non-value of a thing, I never forget. The only kind
of memory I wish to preserve is the Proustian sort. To know that
there is this infaUible, total, exact memory is sufficient for me.
How often it happens that, in glancing through a book read long
ago, one stimibles on passages whose every word has a burning,
inexhaustible, unforgettable resonance i Recently, in completing y

the script of the second book of The Rosy Crucifixion, I was obHged
to turn to my notes, made many years ago, on Spengler's Declitt^^
of the West. There were certain passages, a considerable number,
I might say, of which I had only to read the opening words and
the rest followed Hke music. The sense of the words had lost, in
some instances, some of the importance I once attached to them,
but not the words themselves. Every time I struck these passages,
for I had read them again and again, the language became more
redolent, more pregnant, more charged with that mysterious
quality which every great author embeds in his language and which
is the mark of his uniqueness. At any rate, so impressed was I by
the vitality and hypnotic character of these Spenglerian passages
that I decided to quote a number of them in their entirety. It was
an experiment which I felt obHged to conduct, an experiment
between myself and my readers. The lines I chose to quote had
become my very own and I felt that they had to be transmitted.
Were they not every bit as important in my Hfe as the haphazard
encounters, crises and events which I had described as my own ?
Why not pass Oswald Spengler on intact also since he was an
event in my life ?

I am one of those readers who, from time to time, copy out
long passages from the b^<^ks I read. I find these citations every-

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

where whenever I begin going through my belongings. They
are never at my elbow, fortunately or unfortunately. Sometimes
I spend whole days trying to recollect where I have secreted them.
Thus, the other day, opening one of my Paris notebooks to look
for something else, I stimibled on one of those passages which have
hved with me for years. It is by Gautier from Havelock Ellis* Intro-
duction to Against the Grain. It begins : " The poet of the Fleurs
du Mai loved what is improperly called the style of decadence,
and which is. nothing else but art arrived at that point of extreme
maturity yielded by the slanting suns of aged civilizations : an
ingenious, compHcated style, full of shades and of research, con-
stantly pushing back the boundaries of speech, borrowing from
all the technical vocabularies, taking color from all palettes and
notes from all keyboards ..." Then follows a sentence which
always pops up Hke a flashing semaphore : " The style of decadence
is the ultimate utterance of the Word, summoned to final expression
and driven to its last hiding-place."

Utterances such as these I have often copied out in large letters
and placed above my door so that, in leaving, my friends would
be sure to read them. Some people have the opposite compulsion
— they keep these precious revelations secret. My weakness is to
shout from the rooftop whenever I beHeve I have discovered some-
thing of vital importance. On finishing a wonderfril book, for
example, I almost always sit down and write letters to my friends,
sometimes to the author, and occasionally to the publisher. The
experience becomes a part of my daily conversation, enters into the
very food and drink I consume. I called this a weakness. Perhaps
it is not. ** Increase and multiply ! " commanded the Lord.
E. Graham Howe, author of War Dance, put it another way, which
I like even better. " Create and share!" he counseled. And, though
reading may not at first blush seem like an act of creation, in a deep
sense it is. Without the enthusiastic reader, who is really the author's
coimterpart and very often his most secret rival, a book would die.
The man who spreads the good word augments not only the life of
the book in question but the act of creation itself. He breathes spirit
into other readers. He sustains the creative spirit everywhere.
Whether he is aware of it or not, what he is doing is praising God's
handiwork. For, the good reader, like the good author, knows that

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

everything stems from the same source. He knows that he could not
participate in the author's private experience were he not composed
of the same substance through and through. And when I say author
I mean Author. The writer is, of course, the best of all readers, for in
writing, or ** creating," as it is called, he is but reading and transcrib-
ing the great message of creation which the Creator in his goodness
has made manifest to him.

In the Appendix the reader will find a list of authors and titles
arranged in a firank and curious way.* I mention it because I think
it important to stress at the outset a psychological fact about the
reading of books which is rather neglected in most works on the
subject. It is this : many of the books one Uves with in one's mind
are books one has never read. Sometimes these take on amazing
importance. There are at least three categories of this order. The
first comprises those books which one has every intention of reading
some day but in all probability never will ; the second comprises
those books which one feels he ought to have read, and which, some
at least, he undoubtedly will read before he dies ; the third comprises
the books one hears about, talks about, reads about, but which one
is almost certain never to read because nothing, seemingly, can ever
break down the wall of prejudice erected against them.

In the first category are those monumental works, classics mostly,
which one is usually ashamed to admit he has never read : tomes
one nibbles at occasionally, only to push them away, more than ever
convinced that they are still unreadable. The list varies with the
individual. For myself, to give a few outstanding names, they
comprise the works of such celebrated authors as Homer, Aristotle,
Francis Bacon, Hegel, Rousseau (excepting Entile), Robert Brown-
ing, Santayana. In the second category I include Arabia Deserta, the
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, The Hundred and Twenty Days
of Sodom, Casanova's Memoirs, Napoleon's Memoirs, Michelet's
History of the French Revolution. In the third Pepys' Diary, Tristram
Shandy, Wilhelm Meister, The Anatomy of Melancholy, The Red
and the Black, Marius the Epicurean, The Education of Henry Adams.

Sometimes a chance reference to an author one has neglected to
read or abandoned all thought of ever reading — a passage, say, in
the work of an author one admires, or the words of a friend who is

* That is, those I have read and those I still hope to read.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE,

ako a book lover— is sufficient to make one run for a book, read it
with new eyes and claim it as one's very own. In the main, however,
the books one neglects, or deUberately spurns, seldom get read. Cer-
tain subjects, certain styles, or unfortunate associations connected v^dth
the very names of certain books, create a repugnance almost
insuperable. Nothing on earth, for example, could induce me to
tackle anew Spenser's Faery Queen, which I began in college and
fortunately dropped because I left that institution in a hurry. Never
again will I look at a line of Edmund Burke, or Addison, or Chaucer,
though the last-named I think altogether worthy of reading. Racine
and Comeille are two others I doubt if I shall ever look at again,
though Comeille intrigues me because of a brilliant essay I
read not long ago on Phldre in The Cloums Grail* On the
other hand there are books which He at the very foundations
^ of literature but which are so remote from one's thinking
' and experience as to render them " untouchable." Certain
authors, supposed to be the bulwark of our particular Western
culture, are more foreign in spirit to me than are the Chinese,
the Arabs, or primitive peoples. Some of the most exciting
Hterary works spring from cultures which have not contributed
directly to our development. No fairy tales, for example, have
/--v exercised a more potent influence over me than those of the Japanese,
r^ which I became acquainted with through the work of Lafcadio
Heam, one of the exotic figures in American Hterature. No stories
were more seductive to me as a child than those drawn from the
Arabian Nights* Entertainment. American Indian folklore leaves me
cold, whereas the folklore of Afiica is near and dear to me.f And,
as I have said repeatedly, whatever I read of Chinese Uterature
(barring Confiidus) seems as if written by my immediate ancestors.
I said that sometimes it is an esteemed author who puts one on
the track of a buried book. ** What! He liked that book?" you
say to yourself, and immediately the barriers fall away and the mind
becomes not only open and receptive but positively aflame. Often
it happens that it is not a friend of similar tastes who revives one's
interest in a dead book but a chance acquaintance. Sometimes this

* By Wallace Fowlie. Sub-title : A Study of Love ht its Literary Expression ;
Dennis Dobson, Ltd., London, 1947.
t See Cendrars* African Anthology.

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

individual gives the impression of being a nitwit, and one wonders
why he should retain the memory of a book which this person
casually recommended, or perhaps did not recommend at all but
merely mentioned in the course of conversation as being an ** odd "
book. In a vacant mood, at loose ends, as we say, suddenly the
recollection of this conversation occurs, and we are ready to give the
book a trial. Then comes a hock, the shock of discovery. Wuthering
Heights is for me an example of this sort. From having heard it
praised so much and so often, I had concluded that it was impossible
for an English novel — ^by a woman ! — to be that good. Then one
day a friend, whose taste I suspected to be shallow, let drop a few
pregnant words about it. Though I promptly proceeded to forget
his remarks, the poison sank into me. Without realizing it, I nur-
tured a secret resolve to have a look at this famous book one day.
Finally, just a few years ago, Jean Varda put it in my hands.* I
read it in one gulp, astoimded as is everyone, I suspect, by its amazing
power and beauty. Yes, one of the very great novels in the EngHsh
language. And I, through pride and prejudice, had almost missed
reading it.

Quite another story is that of The City of God. Many years ago
I had, like everyone else, read the Confessions of St. Augustine. And
it had made a deep impression. Then, in Paris, some one thrust
upon me The City of God^ in two volumes. I found it not only
boring and deadly, but in parts monstrously ridiculous. An English
bookseller, hearing from a mutual friend — to his surprise, no doubt —
that I had read this work informed me that he could get a good
price for it if I would only annotate it. I sat down to read it once
again, taking elaborate pains to make copious remarks, usually
derogatory, in the margins ; after spending a month or so at this
vain task I dispatched the book to England. Twenty years later I
received a post card from this same bookseller stating that he hoped
to sell the copy in a few days — ^he had found a buyer for it at last.
And that was the last I heard from him. Droie d'histoire !

Throughout my Hfe the word ** confessions " in a title has alwa)^
acted like a magnet. I mentioned Strindberg's Confession of a Fool, i
I should also have mentioned Marie BashkirtsefF's famous work

* He also put into my hands another amazing book, Hebdomeros, by the
painter, Giorgio di Chirico.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

and the Confessions of Two Brothers by Powys. There are some very
celebrated confessions, however, which I have never been able to
wade through. One is Rousseau's, another is de Quincey's. Only
recently I took another stab at Rousseau's Confessions, but after a
few pages was forced to abandon it. His Emile, on the other hand, I
fully intend to read— when I can find a copy with readable type.
The Httle I did read of it had an extraordinary appeal.

I beheve they are woefully mistaken who assert that the founda-
tions of knowledge or culture, or any foundations whatsoever, are
necessarily those classics which arc found in every list of ** best "
books. I know that there are several universities which base their
entire curricula on such select lists. It is my opinion that each man
has to dig his own foundations. If one is an individual at all it is by
reason of his uniqueness. Whatever the material which vitally
aflfected the form of our culture, each man must decide for himself
which elements of it are to enter into and shape his own private
destiny. The great works which are singled out by the professorial
minds represent their choice exclusively. It is in the nature of such
intellects to beheve that they are our appointed guides and mentors.
It may be that, if left to our own devices, we would in time share
their point of view. But the surest way to defeat such an end is to
promulgate the reading of select lists of books — the so-called founda-
tion stones. A man should begin with his own times. He should
become acquainted first of all with the world in which he is Uving
and participating. He should not be afraid of reading too much or
too Uttle. He should take his reading as he docs his food or his
exercise. The good reader will gravitate to the good books. He will
discover firom his contemporaries what is inspiring or fecundating, or
merely enjoyable, in past Hterature. He should have the pleasure
of making these discoveries on his own, in his own way. What has
worth, charm, beauty, wisdom, cannot be lost or forgotten. But
things can lose all value, all charm and appeal, if one is dragged to
them by the scalp. Have you not noticed, after many heart-aches and
disillusionments, that in recommending a book to a friend the less
said the better i The moment you praise a book too highly you
awaken resistance in your listener. One has to know when to give
the dose and how much — and if it is to be repeated or not. The
gurus of India and Tibet, it is often pointed out, have for ages
32

THBY WERE ALIVE AND THBY SPOKE TO MB

practiced the high art o( discouraging their ardent would-be disciples.
The same sort of strategy might well be applied where the reading
of books is concerned. Discourage a man in the right way, that is,
with the right end in view, and you will put him on the path that
much more quickly. The important thing is not which books, which
experiences, a man is to have, but what he puts into them of his own.
One of the most mysterious of all the intangibles in Hfe is what we
call influences. Undoubtedly influences come under the law of
attraction. But it should be borne in mind that when we are
pulled in a certain direction it is also because we pushed in that
direction, perhaps without knowing it. It is obvious that we are not
at the mercy of any and every influence. Nor are we always cogni-
zant of the forces and factors which influence us from one period to
another. Some men never know themselves or what motivates their
behavior. Most men, in fact. With others the sense of destiny is so
clear, so strong, that there hardly seems to be any choice : they 1
create the influences needed to fulfill their ends. I use the word i
" create " deHberately, because in certain startling instances the j
individual has literally been obUged to create the necessary influences. ^
We are on strange grounds here. My reason for introducing such
an abstruse element is that, where books are concerned, just as with
friends, lovers, adventures and discoveries, all is inextricably mixed.
The desire to read a book is often provoked by the most unexpected
incident. To begin with, everything that happens to a man is of a
piece. The books he chooses to read are no exception. He may
have read Plutarch's Liues or The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the
World because a doting aimt thrust them under his nose. He may
not have read them if he detested this aunt. Of the thousands of .
titles which come under one's ken, even early in hfe, how is it that
one individual steers straight towards certain authors and another
towards others ? The books a man reads are determined by what a
man is. If a man be left alone in a room with a book, a single book, it
does not follow that he will read it because he has nothing better to
do. If the book bores him he will drop it, though he may go well-
nigh mad for want of anything better to do. Some men, in reading,
take the pains to look up every reference given in the foomotes ;
others again never even glance at footnotes. Some men will under-
take arduous journeys to read a book whose title alone has intrigued

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

them. The adventures and discoveries of Nicholas Flamel in connec-
tion with the Book of Abraham the Jew constitute one of the golden
pages in literature.

As I was saying, the chance remark of a friend, an unexpected
encounter, a footnote, illness, solitude, strange quirks of memory,
a thousand and one things can set one off in pursuit of a book. There
are times when one is susceptible to any and all suggestions, hints,
intimations. And there are times again when it takes dynamite to
put one afoot and astir.

One of the great temptations, for a writer, is to read when engaged
in the writing of a book. With me it seems that the moment I
begin a new book I develop a passion for reading too. In fact, due
to some perverse instinct, the moment I am launched on a new book
I itch to do a thousand different things — not, as is often the case, out
of a desire to escape the task of writing. What I fmd is that I can
write and do other things. When the creative urge seizes one — at
least, such is my experience — one becomes creative in all directions
at once.

It was in the days before I undertook to write, I must confess, that
reading was at once the most voluptuous and the most pernicious
of pastimes. Looking backward, it seems to me as if the reading of
books was nothing more than a narcotic, stimulating at first but
depressing and paralyzing afterwards. From the time I began
in earnest to write, the reading habit altered. A new element crept
into it. A fecundating element, I might say. As a young man I often
thought, on putting a book down, that I could have done much
better myself The more I read the more critical I became. Hardly
anything was good enough for me. Gradually I began to despise
books — and authors too. Often the writers I had most adored were
the ones I castigated mercilessly. There was always a fringe of
authors, to be sure, whose magic powers baffled and eluded me. As
the time approached for me to assert my own powers of expression
I began to reread these ** spellbinders " with new eyes. I read cold-
bloodedly, with all the powers of analysis I possessed. In order,
bcHeve it or not, to rob them of their secret. Yes, I was then naive
enough to beUcve that I could discover what makes the clock tick
by taking it apart. Vain and foolish though my behavior was, this
period stands out, nevertheless, as one of the most rewarding of all
34

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

my bouts with books. I learned something about style, about the
art of narration, about effects and how they are produced. Best of
all, I learned that there really is a mystery involved in the creation
of good books. To say, for example, that the style is the man, is to
say almost nothing. Even when we have the man we have next to
nothing. The way a man writes, the way he speaks, the way he
walks, the way he does everything, is unique and inscrutable. The
important thing, so obvious that one usually overlooks it, is not to
wonder about such matters but to listen to what a man has to say,
to let his words move you, alter you, make you more and more
what you truly are.

The most important factor in the appreciation of any art is the
practice of it. There is the wonder and intoxication of the child when
it first encounters the world of books ; there is the ecstasy and
despair of youth in discovering his ** own " authors ; but greater
than these, because combined with them are other more permanent
and quickening elements, are the perceptions and reflections of a
mature being who has dedicated his Hfe to the task of creation. In
reading Van Gogh's letters to his brother, one is struck by the vast
amount of meditation, analysis, comparison, adoration and criticism
he indulged in during the course of his brief and frenzied career as a
painter. It is not uncommon, among painters, but in Van Gogh's
case it reaches heroic proportions. Van Gogh was not only looking
at nature, people, objects, but at other men's canvases, studying their
methods, techniques, styles and approaches. He reflected long and
earnestly on what he observed, and these thoughts and observations
penetrated his work. He was anything but a primitive, or a " fauve."
Like Rimbaud, he was nearer to being " a mystic in the wild state."

It is not altogether by accident that I have chosen a painter rather
than a writer to illustrate my point. It happens that Van Gogh,
without having any literary pretensions whatever, wrote one of the
great books of our time, and without knowing that he was writing
a book. His life, as we get it in the letters, is more revelatory, more
moving, more a work of art, I would say, than are most of the
famous autobiographies or autobiographical novels. He tells us
unreservedly of his struggles and sorrows, withholding nothing.
He displays his rare knowledge of the painter's craft, though he is
acclaimed more for his passion and his vision than for his knowledge

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

of the medium. His life, in that it makes clear the value and the
meaning of dedication, is a lesson for all time. Van Gogh is at one
and the same time — and of how few men can we say this ! — the
humble disciple, the student, the lover, the brother of all men, the
critic, the analyst, and the doer of good deeds. He may have been
obsessed, or possessed rather, but he was not a fanatic working in the
dark. He possessed, for one thing, that rare faculty of being able to
criticize and judge his own work. He proved, indeed, to be a much
better critic and judge than those whose business it unfortunately
is to criticize, judge and condemn.

The more I write the more I understand what others are tryii^ to
tell me in their books. The more I write the more tolerant I grow ,
with regard to my fellow writers. (I am not including " bad "
writers, for with them I refuse to have any traffic.) But with those
who are sincere, with those who are honestly struggling to express
themselves, I am much more lenient and understanding than in the
days when I had not yet written a book. I can learn from the poorest
writer, provided he has done his utmost. Indeed, I have learned a
very great deal from certain " poor " writers. In reading their works
I have been struck time and again by that freedom and boldness
which it is almost impossible to recapture once one is " in harness,"
once one is aware of the laws and limitations of his medium. But
it is in reading one's favorite authors that one becomes supremely
aware of the value of practicing the art of writing. One reads then
with the right and the left eye. Without the least diminution of the
sheer enjoyment of reading, one becomes aware of a marvellous
heightening of conscioumess. In reading these men the element of the
mysterious never recedes, but the vessel in which their thoughts are
contained becomes more and more transparent. Drunk with
ecstasy, one returns to his own work revivified. Criticism is con-
verted into reverence. One begins to pray as one never prayed
before. One no longer prays for oneself but for Brother Giono,
Brother Cendrars, Brother Celine — for the whole galaxy of fellow
authors, in fact. One accepts the uniqueness of his fellow artist
imreservedly, realizing that it is only through one's uniqueness that
one asserts his commonness. One no longer asks for something
different of his beloved author but for more of the same. Even the
ordinary reader testifies to this longing. Does he not say, on finishing
36

THBY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

the last volume of his favorite author : "If only he had written a
few more books ! " When, after an author is dead some time, a
forgotten manuscript is dug up, or a bundle of letters, or an un-
known diary, what a cry of exultation goes up ! What gratitude for
even the tiniest posthumous fragment ! Even the perusal of an
author's expense account gives us a thrill. The moment a writer
dies his Hfe suddenly becomes of momentous interest to us. His
death often enables us to see what we could not sec when he was
aUve — that his Hfe and work were one. Is it not obvious that the art
of resuscitation (biography) masks a profound hope and longing ?
We are not content to let Balzac, Dickens, Dostoievsky remain
immortal in their works — we want to restore them in the flesh. /
Each age strives to join the great men of letters with its own, to
incorporate the pattern and significance of their Hves in its own.
Sometimes it seems as though the influence of the dead were more
potent than the influence of the living. If the Saviour had not been
resurrected, man would certainly have resurrected Him through
grief and longing. That Russian author who spoke of the " neces-
sity " of resurre<jting the dead spoke truly.

They were alive and they spoke to me! That is the simplest and most
eloquent way in which I can refer to those authors who have
remained with me over the years. Is this not a strange thing to say,
considering that we are dealing, in books, with signs and symbols i
Just as no artist has ever succeeded in rendering nature on canvas,
so no author has ever truly been able to give us his Hfe and thoughts.
Autobiography is the purest romance. Fiction is always closer to
reaHty than fact. The fable is not the essence of worldly wisdom but
the bitter sheU. One might go on, through aU the ranks and divisions
of Hterature, unmasking history, exposing the myths of science,
devaluating aesthetics. Nothing, on deep analysis, proves to be what
it seems or purports to be. Man continues to hunger.

They were alive and they spoke to me! Is it not strange to understand
and enjoy what is incommunicable ? Man is not communicating with
man through words, he is communing with his feUow man and with
his Maker. Over and over again one puts down a book and one is
speechless. Sometimes it is because the author seems " to have said
everything.'* But I am not thinking of this sort of reaction. I am
thinking that this business of becoming mute corresponds to some-

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

thing much deeper. It is from the silence that words are drawn, and
it is to the silence that they return, if properly used. In the interval
something inexpHcable takes place : a man who is dead, let us say,
resuscitates himself, takes possession of you, and in departing leaves
you thoroughly altered. He did this by means of signs and symbols.
Was this not magic which he possessed — perhaps still possesses ?

Though we know it not, we do possess the key to paradise. Wc
talk a great deal about understanding and communicating, not only
with our fellow man but with the dead, with the imbom, with those
who inhabit other realms, other universes. We believe that there
are mighty secrets to be unlocked. We hope that science will poillt
the way, or if not, religion. We dream of a Hfe in the distant future
which will be utterly different from the one we now know ; we
invest ourselves with powers unnameable. Yet the writers of books
have ever given evidence not only of magical powers but of the
existence of universes which infringe and invade our own Httle
universe and which are as famiUar to us as though we had visited
them in the flesh. These men had no " occult " masters to initiate
diem. They sprang from parents similar to our own, they were the
products of environments similar to our own. What makes them
stand apart then ? Not the use of imagination, for men in other
walks of Hfe have displayed equally great powers of imagination.
Not the mastery of a technique, for other artists practice equally
difficult techniques. No, to me the cardinal fact about a writer is his
abihty to " exploit " the vast silence which enwraps us all. Of all
artists he is the one who best knows that " in the beginning was the
Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." He
has caught the spirit which informs all creation and he has rendered
it in signs and symbols. Pretending to communicate with his
fellow creatures, he has unwittingly taught us to commune with the
Creator. Using language as his instrument, he demonstrates that it
is not language at all but prayer. A very special kind of prayer, too,
since nothing is demanded of the Creator. ** Blessings on thee, O
Lord ! " So it runs, no matter what the subject, what the idiom.
" Let me exhaust myself, O Lord, in singing thy praises ! "

Is this not " the heavenly work " of which it has been spoken ;

Let us cease to wonder what they, the great, the illustrious ones,
are doing in the beyond. Know that they are still singing hymns of
38

THEY WERE ALIVE AND THEY SPOKE TO ME

praise. Here on eartli they may have been practicing. There they are

perfecting their song. i

Once again I must mention the Russians, those obscure ones of
the Nineteenth Century, who knew that there is only one task, one ,
supreme joy — to establish the perfect Hfe here on earth.* J

* In 1880 Dostoievsky made a speech on " The Mission of Russia " in
which he said : " To become a true Russian is to become the brother of
all men, a universal man. . . . Our future Ues in Universality, not won by
violence, but by the strength derived from our great ideal — the reuniting
of all mankind."

EARLY READING

It is only in the last few years that I have begun to reread — certain
books. I can recall with accuracy the first books I singlec^out to
reread : The Birth of Tragedy, The Eternal Husband, Alice in Wonder-
land, The Imperial Orgy, Hamsun's Mysteries. Hamsun, as I have
often said, is one of the authors who vitally affected me as writer.
None of his books intrigued me as much as Mysteries. In that period
I spoke of earher, when I began to take my favorite authors apart in
order to discover their secret power of enchantment, the men I
concentrated on were Hamsun first of all, then Arthur Machen, then
Thomas Mann. When I came to reread The Birth of Tragedy I
remember being positively stunned by Nietzsche's magical use of
language. Only a few years ago, thanks to Eva SikeHanou, I became
intoxicated once again with this extraordinary book.

I mentioned Thomas Mann. For a whole year I Uved with Hans
Castorp of The Magic Mountain as with a living person, as with a
blood brother, I might even say. But it was Mann's skill as a writer
of short stories, or novelettes, which most intrigued and baffled mc
during the " analytical " period I speak of At that time Death in
Venice was for me the supreme short story. In the space of a few
years, however, my opinion of Thomas Mann, and especially of his
Death in Venice, altered radically. It is a curious tale and perhaps
worth recounting. It was like this . . . During my early days in
Paris I made the acquaintance of a most engaging and provocative
individual whom I beHeved to be a genius. John Nichols was his
name. He was a painter. Like so many Irishmen, he also possessed
the gift of gab. It was a privilege to listen to him, whether he
were discussing painting, Hterature, music, or talking sheer nonsense.
He had a flair for invective, and, when he waxed strong, his tongue
was vitrioHc. One day I happened to speak of my admiration for
Thomas Mann and, before long, I found myself raving about Death
in Venice. Nichols responded with jeers and contempt. In exaspera-
40

EARLY READING

tion I told him I would get the book and read the story aloud to him.
He admitted he had never read it and thought my proposal an excel-
lent one.

I shall never forget this experience. Before I had read three pages
Thomas Mann began to crumble. Nichols, mind you, had not said
a word. But reading the story aloud, and to a critical ear, suddenly
the whole creaking machinery which underlay this fabrication
exposed itself. I, who thought I was holding in my hands a piece of
pure gold, found myself looking at a piece of papier-mach^. Half-
way through I flung the book on the floor. Later on I glanced
through The Magic Mountain and Buddenhrooks, works I had regarded
as monumental, only to find them equally meretricious.

This sort of experience, I must quickly add, has happened but
seldom to me. There was one outstanding one — I blush to mention
it ! — ^and that was in connection with Three Men in a Boat. How on
earth I had ever managed to find that book " funny " is beyond my
comprehension. Yet I had, once. Indeed, I remember that I laughed
until the tears came to my eyes. The other day, after a lapse of
thirty years, I picked it up and started to read it again. Never have
I tasted a shoddier piece of tripe. Another disappointment, though
much milder, lay in store for me on rereading The Triumph of the
Egg. It came near to being a rotten egg.* But once it had made me
laugh and weep.

Oh, who was I, what was I, in those dreary days of long ^o ?

What I started to say is that, in rereading, I find more and more
that the books I long to read again are the ones I read in childhood
and early youth. I mentioned Henty, bless his name ! There arc
others — like Rider Haggard, Marie Corelli, Bulwer-Lytton, Eugene
Sue, James Fenimore Cooper, Sienkiewicz, Ouida {Under Two
Flags), Mark Twain {Hnckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer particularly).
Imagine not having read any of these men since boyhood ! It seems
incredible. As for Poe, Jack London, Hugo, Conan Doyle, Kipling,
it matters Uttle if I never look at their works again, f

I should also like very much to reread those books which I used

* It should not be inferred from this that I have turned against Sherwood
Anderson, who has meant so much to me. I have still a great admiration for
his WineshuTg, Ohio and Many Marriages.

f For some mysterious reason I do, howe er, intend to read Toilers of
the Sea, which I missed when I was devouring Hugo.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

to read aloud to my grandfather as he sat on his tailor's bench in our
old home in the Fourteenth Ward in Brooklyn. One of these, I
recall, was about our great " hero " (for a day) — Admiral Dewey.
Another was about Admiral Farragut — probably about the battle of
Mobile Bay, if there ever was such an engagement. Regarding this
book I recall now that, in writing the chapter called " My Dream of
Mobile " in The Air-conditioned Nightmare, I was actively aware of
this tale of Farragut's heroic exploits. Without a doubt, my whole
conception of Mobile was colored by this book I had read fifty years
ago. But it was through the book on Admiral Dewey that I became
acquainted with my first Hve hero, who was not Dewey but our
sworn enemy, Aguinaldo, the Fihpino rebel. My mother had hung
Dewey's portrait, floating above the battleship Maine, over my bed.
Aguinaldo, whose likeness is now dim in my mind, links up physically
with that strange photograph of Rimbaud taken in Abyssinia, the
one wherein he stands in prison-Hke garb on the banks of a stream.
Little did my parents reaHze, in handing me our precious hero.
Admiral Dewey, that they were nurturing in me the seeds of a rebel.
Beside Dewey and Teddy Roosevelt, Aguinaldo stands out Hke a
colossus. He was the fu-st Enemy Number One to cross my horizon.
I still revere his name, just as I still revere the names of Robert E.
Lee and Toussaint L'Ouverture, the great Negro hberator who
fought Napoleon's picked men and worsted them.

In this vein how can I forbear mentioning Carlyle's Heroes and
Hero Worship ? Or Emerson's Representative Men ? And why not
make room for another early idol, John Paul Jones ? In Paris, thanks
to Blaise Cendrars, I learned what is not given in history books or
biographies concerning John Paul Jones. The spectacular story of
this man's life is one of those projected books which Cendrars has
not yet written and probably never will. The reason is simple.
Following the trail of this adventurous American, Cendrars amassed
such a wealth of material that he was swamped by it. In the course
of his travels, searching for rare documents and buying up rare
books relating to John Paul Jones' myriad adventures, Cendrars
confessed that he had spent more than tenfold the amount given him
by the publishers in advance royalties. Following John Paul Jones'
traces, Cendrars had made a veritable Odyssean voyage. He con-
fessed finally that he would one day either write a huge tome on
42

EARLY READING

the subject or a very thin book, something which I understand
perfectly.

The first person to whom I ventured to read aloud was my grand-
father. Not that he encouraged it ! I can still hear him saying to my
mother that she would regret putting all those books in my hands.
He was right. My mother did regret it bitterly, later. It was my
own mother, incidentally, whom I can scarcely recall ever seeing with
a book in her hand, who told me one day when I was reading The
Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World that she had read that book
years ago herself— in the toilet. I was flabbergasted. Not that she
had admitted to reading in the toilet, but that it should have been
that book, of all books, which she had read there.

Reading aloud to my boyhood friends, particularly to Joey and
Tony, my earhest friends, was an eye-opener for me. I discovered
early in hfe what some discover only much later, to their disgust
and chagrin, namely, that reading aloud to people can put them to
sleep. Either my voice was monotonous, either I read poorly, or
the books I chose were the wrong sort. Inevitably my audience went
to sleep on me. Which did not discourage me, incidentally, from
continuing the practice. Nor did these experiences alter the opinion
I had of my little friends. No, I came quietly to the conclusion that
books were not for everyone. I still hold to that view. The last thing
on earth I would counsel is to make everyone learn to read. If I had
my way, I would first see to it that a boy learned to be a carpenter, a
builder, a gardener, a hunter, a fisherman. The practical things first,
by all means, then the luxuries. And books are luxuries. Of course I
expect the normal youngster to dance and sing from infancy. And
to play games. I would abet these tendencies with might and main.
But the reading of books can wait.

To play games . . . Ah, there is a chapter of life in a category
all by itself I mean, primarily, out-of-door games — the games
which poor children play in the streets of a big city. I pass up the
temptation to expand on this subject lest I write another, very
different, kind of book !

However, boyhood is a subject I never tire of Neither the
remembrance of the wild and glorious games we played by day and
night in the streets, nor the characters with whom I hobnobbed and
whom I sometimes deified, as boys are prone to do. All my cxper-

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

iences I shared with my comrades, including the experience of
reading. Time and again, in my writings, I have made mention of
the amazing acumen we displayed in discussing the fundamental
problems of Hfe. Subjects such as sin, evil, reincarnation, good
government, ethics and morality, the nature of the deity, Utopia,
life on other planets — these were food and drink to us. My real
education was begun in the street, in empty lots on cold November
days, or on street comers at night, frequently with out skates on.
Naturally, one of the things we were forever discussing was books,
the books we were then reading and which we were not even sup-
posed to know about. It sounds extravagont to say so, I know, but it
docs seem to me that only the great interpreters of Uterature can rival
the boy in the street when it comes to extracting the flavor and
essence of a book. In my humble opinion, the boy is much nearer
to understanding Jesus than the priest, much closer to Plato, in his
views on government, than the political figures of this world.

During this golden period of boyhood there was suddenly injected
into my world of books a whole Hbrary, housed in a beautiful
walnut bookcase with glass doors and movable shelves, of boys'
books. They were from the collection of an Englishman, Isaac
Walker, my father's predecessor, who had the distinction of being
one of the first merchant tailors of New York. As I review them
now in my mind, these books were all handsomely bound, the titles
embossed usually in gold, as were the cover designs. The paper was
thick and glossy, the type bold and clear. In short, these books were
de luxe in every respect. Indeed, so elegantly forbidding was their
appearance, that it took some time before I dared tackle them.

What I am about to relate is a curious thing. It has to do with my
deep and mysterious aversion for everything English. I beUeve I am
telling the truth when I say that the cause of this antipathy is deeply
connected with the reading of Isaac Walker's Httle Hbrary. How
profound was my disgust, on becoming acquainted with the contents
of these books, may be judged by the fact that I have completely
forgotten the titles. Just one lingers in my memory, and even this
one I am not positive is correct : A Country Squire. The rest is a
blank. The nature of my reaction I can put in a few words. For the
first time in my life I sensed the meaning of melancholy and morbid-
ity. All these elegant books seemed wrapped in a veil of thick fog.
44

EARLY READING

England became for me a land shrouded in murky obscurity, in
evil, cruelty and boredom. Not one ray of light issued from these
musty tomes. It was the primordial slime, on all levels. Senseless
and irrational though it be, this picture of England and the EngHsh
lasted well into middle life, until, to be honest, I visited England and
had the opportunity of meeting EngHshmen on their own native
heath.* (My first impression of London, I must however admit,
corresponded closely to my boyhood picture of it ; it is an impres-
sion which has never been wholly dissipated.)

When I came to Dickens, these first impressions were, of course,
corroborated and strengthened. I have very (ev/ pleasant recollections
connected with the reading of Dickens. His books were sombre,
terrifying in parts, and usually boring. Of them all, David Copperfield
stands out as the most enjoyable, the most nearly human, according
to my conception (then) of the word. Fortunately, there was one
book which had been given me by a good aunt,f which served as a
corrective to this morose view of England and the English people.
The title of this book, if I remember righdy, was A Boys History of
England, by Ellis. I remember distinctly the pleasure this book gave
me. There were, to be sure, the Henty books, which I was also read-
ing, or had readjust a Httle earHer, and from which I gained a wholly
different notion of the English world. But the Henty books were
concerned v^dth historical exploits, whereas the books from Isaac
Walker's collection dealt with the immediate past. Years later, when
I came upon Thomas Hardy's works, I reUved these boyish reactions
— the bad ones, I mean. Sombre, tragic, full of mishaps and accidental
or coincidental misfortunes, Hardy's books caused me once again
to adjust my " human " picture of the world. In the end I was
obhged to pass judgment on Hardy. For all the air of realism which
permeated his books, I had to admit to myself that they were not
" true to life." I wanted my pessimism " straight."

On returning to America from France I met two individuals who
were passionately fond of an EngHsh author whom I had never heard

* On reading that delightful and singularly imaginative book, Land Under
England by Joseph O'Neill— just a few years back — the old feeling about
England cropped up again. But this is a book by an Irishman, and an unusual
one it is.

t This good aunt, my father's sister, also gave me The Autocrat at the Break-
fast Table, a brace of books by Samuel Smiles, and Knickerbocker's History of
New York.

/
THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

of— Claude Houghton. " A metaphysical novelist," he is often
called. At any rate, Claude Houghton has done more than any
Englishman, with the exception of W. Travers Symons — the first
** gentleman " I ever met ! — ^to alter profoundly my picture of
England. I have by now read the majority of his works. Whether
the performance is good or bad, Claude Houghton's books captivate
me. Many Americans know I Am Jonathan Scrivener, which would
have made a wonderfiil movie, as would some of his others. His
Julian Grant Loses His Way, one of my favorites, and All Change,
Humanity I are less well known — more's the pity.

But there is one of Claude Houghton's books — here I touch upon
a subject I hope to enlarge on later— which seems to have been
written especially /)r me. It is called Hudson Rejoins the Herd. In a
lengthy letter to the author I explained why this seemed to be so.
This letter will one day be made public* What so startled me, in
reading this book, was that it appeared to give a picture of my most
intimate Hfe during a certain crucial period. The outer circumstances
were " disguised," but the inner ones were hallucinatingly real. I
could not have done better myself For a time I thought that Claude
Houghton had in some mysterious way gained access to these facts
and events in my life. In the course of our correspondence, however,
I soon discovered that all his works are imaginative. Perhaps the
reader will be surprised to learn that I should think such a coincidence
" mysterious." Do not the Uves and characters in fiction frequently
correspond to actual counterparts ? Of course. But still I am
impressed. Those who think they know me intimately should have
a look at this book.

And now, for no reason, unless it be the afterglow of boyhood
reminiscences, there leaps to mind the name of Rider Haggard.
He is one of the authors on the Hst of A Hundred Books I made up
for GaUimard. There was a writer who had me in his thrall ! The
contents of his books are vague and fuzzy. At best I can recall only
a few titles : She, Ayesha, King Solomons Mines, Allan Quatermain.
Yet when I think of them I get the same shivers as I do when I
rehve the meeting between Stanley and Livingstone in darkest Africa.
I am certain that when I reread him, as I expect to do shortly, I shall

* Not to be confused with the " Letter " ; Argus Books, Inc., Mohegan
Lake, New York, 1950.
46

EARLY READING

fmd, as I did with Henty, that my memory will become amazingly
alive and fecund.

This adolescent period over, it becomes increasingly difficult to
strike an author capable of producing an effect anywhere near that
created by Rider Haggard's works. For reasons now inscrutable,
Trilby came close to doing so. Trilby and Peter Ibbetson are a unique
brace of books. That they should have come from a middle-aged
illustrator, renowned for his drawings in " Punch," is more than
interesting. In the introduction to Peter Ibbetson, pubHshed by the
Modem Library, Deems Taylor relates how, ** walking one night
in High Street, Bayswater, with Henry James, Du Maurier offered
his friend an idea for a novel, and proceeded to unfold the plot of
Trilby.'* "James," he says, " declined the offer." Fortunately, I
should say. I can imagine with dread what Henry James would
have made of such a subject.

Oddly enough, the man who put me on the track of Du Maurier
also put into my hands Flaubert's Botiuard et Pecuchet, which I did
not open until thirty years later. He had given this volume and the
Sentimental Education to my father in payment of a small debt he
owed. My father, of course, was disgusted. With the Sentimental
Education goes a queer association. Somewhere Bernard Shaw says
that certain books cannot be appreciated, and should therefore not
be read, until one is past fifty. One of those he cited was this famous
work of Flaubert. It is another of those books, Hke Tom Jones and
Moll Flanders, which I intend one day to read, particularly since I
have " come of age." »

But to return to Rider Haggard . . . Strange that a book such
as Nadja, by Andr6 Breton, should in any way be linked with the
emotional experiences engendered in reading Rider Haggard's
works. I think it is in The Rosy Crucifixion that I have dwelt at some
length — or was it in Remember to Remember ? — upon the spell which
Nadja will always cast over me. Each time I read it I go through the
same inner turmoil, the same rather terrifyingly deHdous sensation
that seizes one, for example, upon finding himself completely
disoriented in the pitch blackness of a room with every square inch
of which he is thoroughly famiUar. I recall singling out a section of

THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

the book which reminded mc vividly of my fint piece of prose, or at
* least the first I was to submit to an editor.* (As I write, I realize that

\) this statement is not quite true, because my very first piece of prose
was an essay on Nietzsche's Anti-Christ, which I wrote for myself
in my father's shop. Also, the first piece of writing I ever submitted
to an editor antedates the aforementioned piece by a few years,
being a critical article which I sent to the Black Cat magazine and
which, to my amazement, was accepted and paid for to the tune of
$1.75, or something like that, this trifling remuneration being
sufficient at the time to set me on fire, to make me throw a brand
new hat into the gutter, where it was immediately crushed by a
passing truck.)

Why an author of the magnitude of Andr^ Breton should be Unked
in my mind with Rider Haggard, of all authors, is something which
would require pages to explain. Perhaps the association is not so
far-fetched after aU, considering the peculiar sources from which the
Surrealists gathered inspiration, nourishment and corroboration.
Nadja is still, to my way of thinking, a unique book. (The photos
which accompany the text have a value all their own.) At any rate, it
is one of the few books I have reread several times with no rupture
of the original spell. This in itself, I do believe, is sufficient to mark
it out.

The word I have dcHbcrately withheld, speaking of Rider Haggard
and of Nadja, is " mystery." This word, both in the singular and
the plural, I have reserved in order to treat of my delightful, all-
engrossing associations with dictionary and encyclopaedia. Many
is the time I spent whole days at the pubHc Hbrary looking up words
or subjects. Here again, to be truthfiil, I must say that tht most
wonderfiil days were passed at home, with my boon companion
Joe O'Regan. Bleak, wintry days, when food was scarce and all
hope or thought of obtaining employment had vanished. Mingled
with the dictionary and encyclopaedia bouts are recollections of other
days or nights spent entirely in playing chess or ping pong, or
painting water colors which we turned out like monomaniacs.

One morning, scarcely out of bed, I turned to my huge Funk &
Wagnall's unabridged dictionary to look up a word which had come

* The man to whom I sent it was Frands K. Hackctt, and never shall
I forget his discreet but encouraging reply, God bless him I

BARLY RBADING

to my mind on awakening. As usual, one word led to another, for
what is the dictionary if not the subtlest fonn of " circuit game "
masquerading in the guise of a book i With Joe at my side, Joe the
eternal sceptic, a discussion ensued which lasted the entire day and
night, the search for more and more definitions never slackening.
It was because of Joe O'Regan, who had stimulated me so often to
question all that I had blindly accepted, that my first suspicions
about the value of the dictionary were aroused. Prior to this moment
I had taken the dictionary for granted, much as one does the Bible.
I had beheved, as everyone does, that in obtaining a definition one
got the meaning of, or shall I say the ** truth," about a word. But
that day, shifting from derivation to derivation, thereby stumbling
upon the most amazing changes in meaning, upon contradictions
and reversals of earUer meanings, the whole framework of lexico-
graphy began to sHther and slide. In reaching the earUest " origin "
of a word I observed that one was up against a stone wall. Surely
it was not possible that the words we were looking up had entered
human language at the points indicated ! To get back only as far
as Sanskrit, Hebrew or Icelandic (and what wonderful words stem
from the Icelandic !) was nothing, in my opinion. History had been
pushed back more than ten thousand years, and here were we,
stranded at the vestibule, so to speak, of modem times. That so
many words of metaphysical and spiritual connotation, freely
employed by the Greeks, had lost all significance was in itself some-
thing to give us pause. To be brief, it soon became apparent that
the meaning of a word changed or disappeared entirely, or became
the very opposite, according to the time, place, culture of the
people using the term. The simple truth that life is what we make
it, how we see it with our whole being, and not what is given
factually, historically, or statistically, appHes to language too. The
one who seems least to understand this is the philologist. But let
me get on — from dictionary to encyclopaedia . . .

It was only natural, in jumping from meaning to meaning, in
observing the uses of the words we were tracking down, that for
a ftiller, deeper treatment we must have recourse to the encyclo-
paedia. The defining process, after all, is one of reference and
cross-reference. To know what a specific word means one has to
know the words which, so to speak, hedge it in. The meaning

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

is never directly given ; it is inferred, implied, or distilled out.
And this is probably because the original source is never known.

But the encyclopaedia ! Ah, there perhaps we would be on
firm ground ! We would look up subjects, not words. We would
discover whence arose these mystifying symbols over which men
had fought and bled, tortured and killed one another. Now there
is a wonderful article in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (the celebrated
edition) on " Mysteries "* and, if one wishes to pass a pleasant,
amusing and instructive day at the Ubrary, by all means start with
a word such as ** mysteries." It will lead you far and wide, it will
send you home reeling, indifferent to food, sleep and other claims
of the autonomic system. But you will never penetrate the mystery !
And if, as the good scholar usually does, you should be impelled
to go from the *' authorities " selected by the encyclopaedic know-
alls to other ** authorities " on the same subject, you will soon find
your awe and reverence for the accumulated wisdom housed in
encyclopaedias withering and crumbling. It is well that one should
become m^fiant in the face of this buried learning. Who, after
all, are these pundits entombed in the encyclopaedias i Are they
the final authorities ? Decidedly not ! The final authority must
always be oneself. These wizened pundits have "labored in the
field," and they have garnered much wisdom. But it is neither
divine wisdom nor even the sum of human wisdom (on any
subject) which they offer us. They have worked Hke ants and
beavers, and usually with as Uttle humor and imagination as these
humble creatures. One encyclopaedia selects its authorities, another
other authorities. Authorities are always a drug on the market. When
you have done with them you know a Uttle about the subject of
your quest and a great deal more about things of no account.
More often than not you end up in despair, doubt and confusion.
If you gain at all, it is in the sharper use of the questioning faculty,
that faculty which Spengler extols and which he distinguishes as
the chief contribution made him by Nietzsche.

The more I think of it the more I beUeve that the unwitting
contribution made me by the makers of encyclopaedias was to
foster the lazy, pleasurable pursuit of learning — the most foolish

* Even Annie Besant, I noticed just the other day, makes mention of this
article, in her book Esoteric Christianity.

EARLY READING

of all pastimes. To read the encyclopaedia was like taking a drug
—one of those drugs of which they say that it has no evil effects,
is non habit-forming. Like the sound, stable, sensible Chinese
of old, I think the use of opium preferable. If one wishes to relax,
to enjoy surcease from care, to stimulate the imagination — and
what could be more conducive to mental, moral and spiritual
health ? — then I would say the judicious use of opium is far better
than the spurious drug of the encyclopaedia.

Looking back upon my days in the Hbrary — curious that I do
not recall my first visit to a Hbrary ! — I Hken them to the days
spent by an opium addict in his Httle cell. I went regularly for
my *' dose " and I got it. Often I read at random, whatever book
came to hand. Sometimes I buried myself in technical works,
or in handbooks, or the " curiosa " of Hterature. There was one
shelf in the reading room of the New York 42nd Street Hbrary,
I recaU, which was packed with mythologies (of many countries,
many peoples) and which I devoured Hke a starved rat. Some-
times, impeUed as if by an ardent mission, I burrowed in nomen-
clatures alone. There were other times when it seemed imperative
— and indeed it was imperative, so deep was my trance — to study
the habits of moles or whales, or the thousand and one varieties
of ophidians. A word Hke ** ecliptic," encountered for the first
time, might set me off on a chase that would last for weeks, leaving
me stranded eventuaUy in the stellar depths this side of Scorpio.

Here I must diverge to make mention of those Httle books
which one stumbles on accidentaHy and which, so great is their
impact, one esteems above whole rows of encyclopaedias and other
compendiums of human knowledge. These books, microcosmic
in size but monumental in effect, may be Hkened to precious stones
hidden in the bowels of the earth. Like gems, these books have a
crystalline or ** primordial " character which gives them a simple,
immutable and eternal quaHty. They are almost as Hmited in
number and variety as crystals in nature. I will mention two at
random which I came upon much later than the period I speak
of but which iUustrate my thought. The one is Symbols of Revelation,
by Frederick Carter, whom I met in London under pecuHar circum-
stances ; the other is The Roundy by Eduardo Santiago, a pseudonym.
I doubt if there are a hundred people in this world who would

THEBOOKSINMYLIFE

be interested in the latter book. It is one of the strangest I know
of, though the subject, apocatastasis, is one of the perennial themes
of religion and philosophy. One of the freakish things connected
with this unique and limited edition of the work is the error in
spelling made by the printer. At the top of every page, in bold
type, it reads : apocastasis. Something even more freakish,
however, something which is apt to give the lovers of Blake the
cold shivers, is the reproduction of WiUiam Blake's Hfe mask (from
the National Portrait Gallery, London) which is given on page 40.

Since I have spoken at some length of dictionary usage, of defini-
tions and their failure to define, and since the average reader is
not apt to recognize the import of such a word as apocatastasis,
let me give the three definitions offered by Funk & "Wagnall's
unabridged dictionary :

" I. Return to or toward a previous place or condition ;
re-establishment ; complete restoration.

"2. Theology. The final restoration to holiness and the favor
of God of those who died impenitent.

" 3. Astronomy. The periodic return of a revolving body to the
same point in its orbit."

In a footnote on page 4 Santiago gives the following from Virgile
by J. Carcopino (Paris, 1930) :

" Apocatastasis is the word which the Chaldeans had already
used to describe the return of the planets, on the celestial sphere,
to the points symmetrical to their departure. It is also the word
the Greek doctors employed to describe the return of the patient
to health."

As for Frederick Carter's Uttle hook— Symbols of Revelation —
it may be of interest to know that it was the author of this book
who suppUed D. H. Lawrence with invaluable material for the
writing of Apocalypse. Without knowing, Carter has also given
me, through his book, the material and inspiration with which I
hope one day to write Draco and the Ecliptic. This, the seal or cap-
stone to my " autobiographical novels," as they are called, I trust
will prove to be a condensed, transparent, alchemical work, thin
as a wafer and absolutely air-tight.

The greatest of all Httle books of course is the Tao Teh ChUng.
I suppose it is not only an example of supreme wisdom but unique
52

EARLY READING

in its condensation of thought. As a philosophy of Hfe it not only
holds its own with the bulkier systems of thought propounded
by other great figures of the past but, in my mind, surpasses them
in every respect. It has one element which wholly sets it apart
from other philosophies of hfe — humor. Aside from the celebrated
follower of Lao-tse who comes a few centuries later, we do not
meet with humor in these lofty regions again until we come to
Rabelais. Rabelais, being a physician as well as a philosopher and
imaginative writer, makes humor appear what in truth it is : the
great emancipator. But beside the suave, sage, spiritual iconoclast
of old China, Rabelais seems Hke an uncouth Crusader. The
Sermon on the Mount is perhaps the only short piece of writing
which can be compared with Lao-tse's miniature gospel of wisdom
and health. It may be a more spiritual message than Lao-tse's,
but I doubt that it contains greater wisdom. It is, of course, utterly
devoid of humor.

Two Httle books of pure hterature, which belong in a category
all their own, to my way of thinking, are Balzac's Seraphita and
Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha. Seraphita I first read in French, at a
period when my French was none too good. The man who put
the book in my hands employed that artful strategy I spoke of
earHer : he said almost nothing about the book except that it was
a book for me. Coming from him, this was incentive enough.
It was indeed a book " for me." It came exactly at the right moment
in my life and it had precisely the desired effect. I have since, if
I may put it thus, " experimented " with it by handing it to people
who were not ready to read it. I learned a great deal from these
experiments. Seraphita is one of those books, and they are rare
indeed, which make their way unaided. Either it ** converts "
a man or it bores and disgusts him. Propaganda can do nothing
to make it more widely read. Indeed, its virtue Hes in this, that
never at any time will it be effectively read except by a chosen
few. It is true that in the beginning of its career it had a wide vogue.
Are we not all famiHar with the exclamation of that young Viennese
student who, accosting Balzac in the street, begged permission
to kiss the hand that wrote Seraphita ? Vogues, however, soon die
out, and it is fortimate they do, because only then does a book
begin its real journey on the road to immortaHty.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Siddhartha I first read in German— after not having read any
German for at least thirty years. It was a book I had to read at
any cost because, so I was told, it was the fruit of Hesse's visit to
India. It had never been translated into EngHsh* and it was difficult
for me, at the time, to lay hands on the 1925 French version which
had been published by Grasset in Paris. Suddenly I found myself
with two copies of it, in German, one sent me by my translator,
Kurt Wagenseil, the other sent by the wife of George Dibbem,
author of Quest. I had hardly finished reading the original version
when my friend Pierre Laleure, a bookseller in Paris, sent me several
copies of the Grasset edition. I immediately reread the book in
that language, discovering to my delight that I had missed nothing
of the flavor or substance of the book because of my very rusty know-
ledge of German. Often since I have remarked to friends, and there
is truth in the exaggeration, that had Siddhartha been obtainable
only in Turkish, Finnish or Hungarian, I would have read and
understood it just the same, though I know not a word of any of
these outlandish tongues.

It is not quite accurate to say that I conceived an overwhelming
desire to read this book because Hermann Hesse had been to India.
It was the word Siddhartha, an epithet which I had always associated
with the Buddha, that whetted my appetite. Long before I had
accepted Jesus Christ, I had embraced Lao-tse and Gautama the
Buddha. The Prince of Enlightenment ! Somehow, that appella-
tion never seemed to fit Jesus. A man of sorrow — that was more
my conception of the gentle Jesus. The word enHghtenment struck
a responsive chord in me ; it seemed to bum out those other words
associated, rightly or wrongly, with the founder of Christianity.
I mean words such as sin, guilt, redemption, and so on. To this
day I still prefer the guru to a Christian saint or the best of the
twelve disciples. About the guru there is, and always will be, this
aura, so precious to me, of " enlightenment."

I should like to speak at length of Siddhartha but, as with Seraphita^
I know that the less said the better. I shall therefore content myself
with quoting — for the benefit of those who know how to read
between the lines — a few words Ufted from an autobiographical sketch
by Hermann Hesse in the September, 1946, issue of Horizon, London.

* An English version is nov/ promised by New Directions.
54

EARLY READING

Another reproach they [his friends] levelled at me I also
found to be quite just : they accused me of lacking in a
sense of reahty. Neither my writings nor my paintings
do in actual fact conform to reaHty, and when I compose
I often forget all the things that an educated reader demands
of a good book — and above all I am lacking in a true
respect for reality.

I see that inadvertently I have touched on one of the vices or
weaknesses of the too passionate reader. Lao-tse says that " when
a man with a taste for reforming the world takes the business in
hand, it is easily seen that there will be no end to it." Only too
true, alas ! Each time I feel impelled to advocate a new book —
with all the powers that are in me — ^I create more work, more
anguish, more frustration for myself. I have spoken of my letter-
writing mania. I have told how I sit down, after closing a good
book, and inform all and sundry about it. Admirable, you think ?
Perhaps. But it is also sheer folly and waste of time. The very
men I seek to interest — critics, editors, pubHshers — are the ones
least affected by my enthusiastic howls. I have come to beheve,
in fact, that my recommendation is alone sufficient to cause editors
and publishers to lose interest in a book. Any book which I sponsor,
or for which I vmte a preface or review, seems to be doomed.*
I think perhaps there is a profound and just law underlying the
situation. As best I can put it, this unwritten law runs thus : " Do
not tamper with the destiny of another, even if that other be nothing
but a book." More and more, too, I understand what makes me
act on these rash impulses. It is, sadly enough, the fact that I identify
myself with the poor author whom I am trying to aid. (Some
of these authors, to reveal a ridiculous aspect of the situation, have
been dead a long time. They are aiding me, not I them !) Of
course I always put it to myself this way : " What a pity that
so-and-so or so-and-so has not read this book ! What joy it would
give him ! What sustenance ! " I never stop to think that the
books which others find on their own may serve equally well.

It was because of my overheated enthusiasm for such books

* An exception is Really the Blues, which, in the French version, carries
a letter, in the form of a preface, under my signature. This book, I am told,
is selling Uke hot cakes. However, I take no credit for this ; it would have
sold as well without my preface.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFB

as The Absolute Collective^ Quest, Blue Boy, Interlinear to Caheza
de Vaca, the Diary of Anais Nin (which still exists only in manu-
script), and others, many others, that I began to plague the perverse
and mercurial tribe of editors and publishers who dictate to the
world what we shall or shall not read. Concerning two writers
particularly, I have penned the most ardent, urgent letters imagin-
able. A schoolboy could not have been more enthusiastic and
naive than I. In writing one of these letters, I recall, I actually shed
tears. It was addressed to the editor of a well-known pocket book
edition. Do you suppose this individual was moved by my
unrestrained emotion ? It took him just about six months to answer,
in that matter of fact, cold-blooded, hypocritical fashion which
editors often employ, that " they " (always the dark hones) had
come to the conclusion, with deep regret (the same old song),
that my man was unsuitable for their list. Gratuitously they cited
the excellent sales enjoyed by Homer (long dead) and William
Faulkner, whom they had chosen to publish. The impHcation
was — ^find us writers like these and we will jump to the bait !
Fantastic as it may sound, it is nevertheless the truth. It is exaaly
how editors think.

However, this vice of mine, as I see it, is a harmless one compared
with those of poHtical fanatics, miUtary humbugs, vice crusaders
and other detestable types. In broadcasting to the world my
admiration and affection, my gratitude and reverence, for two
Uving French writers — Blaise Cendrars and Jean Giono — I fail to
see that I am doing any serious harm. I may be guilty of indiscre-
tion, I may be regarded as a naive dolt, I may be criticized justly
or unjustly for my taste, or lack of it ; I may be guilty, in the
highest sense, of " tampering " with the destiny of others ; I may
be writing myself down as one more ** propagandist," but — ^how
am I injuring anyone i I am no longer a young man^ I am, to
be exact, fifty-eight years of age. (" Je me nomme Louis Salavin.")
Instead of growing more dispassionate about books, I find the
contrary is taking place. Perhaps my extravagant statements do
contain an element of insensitivity. But then I was never what is
called " discreet " or " deUcate." Mine is a rough touch — honest
and sincere, in any case. And so, i(l am guilty, I beg pardon in
advance of my friends Giono and Cendrars. I beg them to disown
56

EARLY READING

me should I bring ridicule upon their heads. But I will not hold
back my words. The course of the previous pages, the course of
my whole hfe, indeed, leads me to this declaration of love and
adoration.

Ill

BLAISE CENDRARS

Cendrars was the first French writer to look me up, during my
stay in Paris,* and the last man I saw on leaving Paris. I had just
a few minutes before catching the train for Rocamadour and I
was having a last drink on the terrasse of my hotel near the Porte
d'Orleans when Cendrars hove in sight. Nothing could have given
me greater joy than this unexpected last-minute encounter. In
a few words I told him of my intention to visit Greece. Then I
sat back and drank in the music of his sonorous voice which to
me always seemed to come from a sea organ. In those last few
minutes Cendrars managed to convey a world of information,
and with the same warmth and tenderness which he exudes in his
books. Like the very ground under our feet, his thoughts were
honeycombed with all manner of subterranean passages. I left
him sitting there in shirt-sleeves, never dreaming that years would
elapse before hearing from him again, never dreaming that I was
perhaps taking my last look at Paris.

I had read whatever was translated of Cendrars before arriving
in France, That is to say, almost nothing. My first taste of him
in his own language came at a time when my French was none
too proficient. I began with Moravagine, a book by no means
easy to read for one who knows Httle French. I read it slowly, with
a dictionary by my side, shifting from one cafe to another. It was
in the Caf^ de la Liberte, comer of the rue de la Gaiete and the
Boulevard Edgar Quinet, that I began it. I remember well the day.
Should Cendrars ever read these lines he may be pleased, touched
perhaps, to know that it was in that dingy hole I first opened his
book.

Moravagine was probably the second or third book which I had
attempted to read in French. Only the other day, after a lapse of
about eighteen years, I reread it. What was my amazement to

* I lived in Paris from March, 1930, to June, 1939.
58

BLAISE CENDRARS

discover that whole passages were engraved in my memory !
And I had thought my French was null ! Here is one of the passages
I remember as clearly as the day I first read it. It begins at the top
of page 77 (Editions Grasset, 1926).

I tell you of things that brought some reUef at the start.
There was also the water, gurgling at intervals, in the
water-closet pipes. . . A boundless despair possessed me.

(Does this convey anything to you, my dear Cendrars i)

Immediately I think of two other passages, even more deeply
engraved in my mind, from Une Nuit dans la Foret* which I read
about three years later. I cite them not to brag of my powers of
memory but to reveal an aspect of Cendrars which his English
and American readers probably do not suspect the existence of

1. I, the freest man that exists, recognise that there is
always something that binds one : that Hberty, indepen-
dence do not exist, and I am full of contempt for, and at
the same time take pleasure in, my helplessness.

2. More and more I reaHse that I have always led the
contemplative life. I am a sort of Brahmin in reverse,
meditating on himself amid the hurly-burly, who, with
all his strength, disciplines himself and scorns existence.
Or the boxer with his shadow, who, furiously, calmly,
punching at emptiness, watches his form. What virtuosity^
what science, what balance, the ease with which he accele-
rates ! Later, one must learn how to take punishment with
equal imperturbability, I, I know how to take punishment
and with serenity I fructify and with serenity destroy
myself : in short, work in the world not so much to enjoy
as to make others enjoy (it's others* reflexes that give
me pleasure, not my own). Only a soul full of despair
can ever attain serenity and, to be in despair, you must
have loved a good deal and 5//// love the ti'orld.'f

These last two passages have probably been cited many times
akeady and will no doubt be cited many times more as the years
go by. They are memorable ones and thoroughly the author's
own. Those who know only Sutter s Gold, Panama and On the
Trans-siberian, which are about ^all the American reader gets to

* Editions du Verseau, Lausanne, 1929.
t Italics mine.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

know, may indeed wonder on reading the foregoing passages why
this man has not been translated more fully. Long before I attempted
to make Cendrars better known to the American pubHc (and to the
world at large, I may well add), John Dos Passos had translated and
illustrated with water colors Panama, or the adventures of my seven
uncles.'^

However, the primary thing to know about Blaise Cendrars is
that he is a man of many parts. He is also a man of many books,
many kinds of books, and by that I do not mean " good ** and
" bad " but books so different one from another that he gives the
impression of evolving in all directions at once. An evolved man,
truly. Certainly an evolved writer.

His life itself reads like the Arabian Nights* Entertainment. And this
individual who has led a super-dimensional Ufe is also a bookworm.
The most gregarious of men and yet a soUtary. (" O mcs
solitudes ! ") A man of deep intuition and invincible logic. The
logic of life. Life fu^t and foremost. Life always with a capital L.
That's Cendrars.

To follow his career from the time he sHps out of his parents*
home in Neufchatel, a boy of fifteen or sixteen, to the days of the
Occupation when he secretes himself in Aix-en-Provence and
imposes on himself a long period of silence, is something to make
one's head spin. The itinerary of his wanderings is more difficult
to follow than Marco Polo's, whose trajectory, incidentally, he
seems to have crossed and recrossed a number of times. One of
the reasons for the great fascination he exerts over me is the resem-
blance between his voyages and adventures and those which I
associate in memory with Sinbad the Sailor or Aladdin of the
Wonderful Lamp. The amazing experiences which he attributes to
the characters in his books, and which often as not he has shared,
have all the qualities of legend as well as the authenticity of legend.
Worshipping Ufe and the truth of life, he comes closer than any
author of our time to revealing the common source of word and
deed. He restores to contemporary life the elements of the heroic,
the imaginative and the fabulous. His adventures have led him to
nearly every region of the globe, particularly those regarded as

* See chapter 12, " Homer of the Trans-siberian," Orient Express ; Jonathan
Cape & Harrison Smith, New York, 1923,
69

Blaise Ccndrars

BLAISE CBNDRARS

dangerous or inaccessible. (One must read his early life especially
to appreciate the truth of this statement.) He has consorted with all
types, including bandits, murderers, revolutionaries and other
varieties of fanatic. He has tried out no less than thirty-six metiers,
according to his own words, but, like Balzac, gives the impression of
knowing every metier. He was once a juggler, for example — on
the English music-hall stage — at the same time that Chaplin was
making his d^but there ; he was a pearl merchant and a smuggler ;
he was a plantation owner in South America, where he made a
fortune three times in succession and lost it even more rapidly than
he had made it. But read his Hfe ! There is more in it than meets the
eye.

Yes, he is an explorer and investigator of the ways and doings of
men. And he has made himself such by planting himself in the
midst of life, by taking up his lot with his fellow creatures. What
a superb, painstaking reporter he is, this man who would scorn the
thought of being called " a student of Hfe." He has the faculty of
getting " his story " by a process of osmosis ; he seems to seek
nothing deliberately. Which is why, no doubt, his own story is
always interwoven with the other man's. To be sure, he possesses
the art of distillation, but what he is vitally interested in is the
alchemical nature of all relationships. This eternal quest of the trans-
mutative enables him to reveal men to themselves and to the world ;
it causes him to extol men's virtues, to reconcile us to their faults
and weaknesses, to increase our knowledge and respect for what is
essentially human, to deepen our love and imderstanding of the
world. He is the " reporter ** par excellence because he combines the
faculties of poet, seer and prophet. An innovator and initiator, ever
the first to give testimony, he has made known to us the real
pioneers, the real adventurers, the real discoverers among our
contemporaries. More than any writer I can think of he has made
dear to us " le bel aujourd'hui."

Whilst performing on all levels he always found time to read. On
long voyages, in the depths of the Amazon, in the deserts (I imagine
he knows them all, those of the earth, those of the spirit), in the
jungle, on the broad pampas, on trains, trams, tramps and ocean
liners, in the great museums and libraries of Europe, Asia and
Africa, he has buried himself in books, has ransacked whole archives,

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

has photographed rare documents, and, for all I know, may have
stolen invaluable books, scripts, documents of all kinds — ^why not,
considering the enormity of his appetite for the rare, the curious, the
forbidden ?

He has told us in one of his recent books how the Germans (les
Boches !) destroyed or carried off, I forget which, his precious
Ubrary, precious to a man like Cendrars who loves to give the most
precise data when referring to a passage from one of his favorite
books. Thank God, his memory is aHve and functions Hke a faithful
machine. An incredible memory, as will testify those who have read
his more recent books — La Main Couple, VHomnte Foudroye, Bottr-
linguer, Le Lotissement du Ciel, La Banlieue de Paris.

On the side — with Cendrars it seems as though almost everything
of account has been done " on the side " — ^he has translated the works
of other writers, notably the Portuguese author, Ferreira de Castro
{Foret Vierge) and our own Al Jennings, the great outlaw and bosom
friend of O. Henry.* What a wonderful translation is Hors-la-
loi which in English is called Through the Shadows with O. Henry.
It is a sort of secret collaboration between Cendrars and the innermost
being of Al Jennings. At the time of writing it, Cendrars had not yet
met Jennings nor even corresponded with him. (This is another
book, I must say in passing, which our pocket book editors have
overlooked. There is a fortune in it, unless I am all wet, and it would
be comforting to think that part of this fortune should fmd its way
into Al Jennings' pocket.)

One of the most fascinating aspects of Cendrars' temperament is
his abihty and readiness to collaborate with a fellow artist. Picture
him, shortly after the first World War, editing the pubHcations of
La Sirene ! What an opportunity ! To him we owe an edition
of Le5 Chants de Maldoror, the first to appear since the original private
pubhcation by the author in 1868. In everything an innovator,
always meticulous, scrupulous and exacting in his demands, whatever
issued from the hands of Cendrars at La Sirene is now a valuable
collector's item. Hand in hand with this capability for collaboration
goes another quaHty — the abiUty, or grace, to make the first over-
tures. Whether it be a criminal, a saint, a man of genius, a tyro with
promise, Cendrars is the first to look him up, the first to herald him,

* Cendrars has also translated Al Caponc's autobiography.
62

BLAISE CENDRARS

the first to aid him in the way the person most desires. I speak with
justifiable warmth here. No writer ever paid me a more signal
honor than dear Blaise Cendrars who, shortly after the pubHcation
of Tropic of Cancer, knocked at my door one day to extend the hand
of firiendship. Nor can I forget that first tender, eloquent review of
the book which appeared under his signature in Orbes shortly there-
after. (Or perhaps it was before he appeared at the studio in the Villa
Seurat.)

There were times when reading Cendrars — and this is something
which happens to me rarely — that I put the book down in order to
wring my hands with joy or despair, with anguish or with despera-
tion. Cendrars has stopped me in my tracks again and again, just as
implacably as a gunman pressing a rod against one's spine. Oh, yes,
I am often carried away by exaltation in reading a man's work. But
I am alluding now to something other than exaltation. I am talking
of a sensation in which all one's emotions are blended and confused.
I am talking of knockout blows. Cendrars has knocked me cold.
Not once, but a number of times. And I am not exactly a ham, when
it comes to taking it on the chin ! Yes, mon cher Cendrars, you not
only stopped me, you stopped the clock. It has taken me days,
weeks, sometimes months, to recover from these bouts with you.
Even years later, I can put my hand to the spot where I caught the
blow and feel the old smart. You battered and bruised me ; you
left me scarred, dazed, punch-drunk. The curious thing is that the
better I know you— through your books— the more susceptible I
become. It is as if you had put the Indian sign on me. I come forward
with chin outstretched — " to take it." / am your meat, as I have so
often said. And it is because I beHeve I am not unique in this, because
I wish others to enjoy this uncommon experience, that I continue to
put in my Httle word for you whenever, wherever, I can.

I incautiously said : "the better I know you." My dear Cendrars,
I will never know you» not as I do other men, of that I am certain.
No matter how thoroughly you reveal yourself I shall never get
to the bottom of you. I doubt that anyone ever will, and it is not
vanity which prompts me to put it this way. You are as inscrutable as
a Buddha. You inspire, you reveal, but you never give yourself
wholly away. Not that you withhold yourself ! No, encountering
you, whether in person or through the written word, you leave the

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

impression of having given all there is to give. Indeed, you are one
of the few men I know who, in their books as well as in person, give
that " extra measure " which means everything to us. You give all
that can be given. It is not your fault that the very core of you
forbids scrutiny. It is the law of your being. No doubt there are
men less inquisitive, less grasping, less clutching, for whom these
remarks are meaningless. But you have so refined our sensitivity, so
heightened our awareness, so deepened our love for men and women,
for books, for nature, for a thousand and one things of life which
only one of your own unending paragraphs could catalogue, that you
awaken in us the desire to turn you inside out. When I read you or
talk to you I am always aware of your inexhaustible awareness : you
are not just sitting in a chair in a room in a city in a country, telling
us what is on your mind or in your mind, you make the chair talk
and the room vibrate with the tumult of the dty whose Hfe is sustained
by the invisible outer throng of a whole nation whose history has
become your history, whose life is your life and yours theirs, and as
you talk or write all these elements, images, facts, creations enter
into your thoughts and feelings, forming a web which the spider in
you ceaselessly spins and which spreads in us, your listeners, until
the whole of creation is involved, and we, you, them, it, everything,
have lost identity and found new meaning, new life . . .

Before proceeding further, there are two books on Cendrars which
I would like to recommend to all who are interested in knowing
more about the man. Both are entitled Blaise Cendrars. One is by
Jacques-Henry Lev&que (Editions de la Nouvelle Critique, Paris,
1947), the other by Louis Parrot (Editions Pierre Seghers, Paris,
1948), finished on the author's deathbed. Both contain biblio-
graphies, excerpts from Cendrars* works, and a number of photo-
graphs taken at various periods of his life. Those who do not read
French may glean a surprising knowledge of this enigmatic individual
from the photographs alone. (It is amazing what spice and vitaHty
French publishers lend their publications through the insertion of old
photographs. Seghers has been particularly enterprising in this
respect. In^his series of Httle square books, called Poetes d*Aujourd*hui*
he has given us a veritable gallery of contemporary and near contem-
porary figures.)

* Distributed in the United States by New Directions.
64

BLAISE CENDRARS

Ycs» one can glean a lot about Cendrars just from studying his
physiognomy. He has probably been photographed more than any
contemporary writer. In addition, sketches and portraits of him have
been made by any number of celebrated artists, including ModigUani,
Apollinaire, L6ger. Flip the pages of the two books I just mentioned
— ^Lev^que's and Parrot's ; take a good look at this " gueule " which
Cendrars has presented to the world in a thousand different moods.
Some will make you weep ; some are almost hallucinating. There
is one photo of him taken in uniform during the days of the Foreign
Legion when he was a corporal. His left hand, holding a butt which
is burning his fingers, protrudes from beneath the cape ; it is a
hand so expressive, so very eloquent, that if you do not know the
story of his missing arm, this will convey it unerringly. It is with
this powerful and sensitive left hand that he has written most of his
books, signed his name to innumerable letters and post cards, shaved
himself, washed himself^ guided his speedy Alfa-Romeo through
the most dangerous terrains ; it is with this left hand that he has
hacked his way through jungles, punched his way through brawls,
defended himself, shot at men and beasts, clapped his copains on the
back, greeted with a warm clasp a long lost £dend and caressed the
women and animals he has loved. There is another photo of him
taken in 192 1 when he was working with Abel Gance on the film
called La Roue^ the eternal cigarette glued to his lips, a tooth missing,
a huge checkered cap with an enormous peak hanging over one ear. 1 'Vx
The expression on his £ux is something out of Dostoievsky. On die
opposite page is a photo taken by Raymonc in 1924, when he was
working on VOr {StUter*s Gold). Here he stands with legs spread
apart, his left hand sHding into the pocket of his baggy pantaloons, -.
a m^ot to his lips, as always. In this photo he looks like a healthy
cocky young peasant of Slavic origin. There is a taunting gleam in
his eye, a sort of ftank, good-natured defiance. *' Fuck you. Jack,
I'm fine . . . and you?" That's what it conveys, his look. Another,
taken with Lev^que at Tremblay-sur-Maulne, 1926, captures him
square in the prime of life. Here he seems to be at his peak physically ;
he emanates health, joy, vitality. In 1928 we have the photo which
has been reprinted by the thousands. It is Cendrars of the South
American period, looking fit, sleek almost, well garbed, his conk
crowned by a handsome fedora with its soft brim upturned. He has

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

a burning, faraway look in the cy«, as if he had just come back from
the Antarctic. (I beUeve it was in this period that he was writing,
or had just finished, Dan Yackt the first half of which [Le Plan de
r Aiguille] has only recendy been issued in translation by an English
publisher.*) But it is in 1944 that we catch a gUmpse of le vieux
Legionnaire — photo by Chardon, Cavaillon. Here he reminds one
of Victor MacLaglan in the tide role of The Informer. This is the
period of V Homme Foudroye, for me one of his major books. Here
he is the fiilly developed earth man composed of many rich layers —
roustabout, tramp, bum, panhandler, mixer, bruiser, adventurer,
sailor, soldier, tough guy, the man of a thousand-and-one hard,
bitter experiences who never went under but ripened, ripened,
ripened. Un homme, quoi ! There are two photos taken in 1946,
at Aix-en-Provence, which yield us tender, moving images of him.
One, in which he leans against a fence, shows him surrounded by
the urchins of the neighbourhood : he is teaching them a few sleight
of hand tricks. The other catches him walking through a shadowed
old street which curves endearingly. His look is meditative, if not
triste. It is a beautifiil photograph, redolent of the atmosphere of
the Midi. One walks with him in his pensive mood, hushed by the
unseizable thoughts which envelop him ... I force myself to
draw rein. I could go on forever about the ** physiognomic ** aspects
of the man. His is a mug one can never forget. It's human, that's
what. Human Hke Chinese faces, like Egyptian, Cretan, Etruscan
ones.

Many are the things which have been said against this writer . . .
that his books are cinematic in style, that they are sensational, that
he exaggerates and deforms \ outrance, that he is prolix and verbose,
that he lacks all sense of form, that he is too much the realist or else
that his narratives are too incredible, and so on ad infinitum. Taken
altogether there is, to be sure, a grain of truth in these accusations, but
let us remember— (w?y a grain I They reflect the views of the paid
critic, the academician, the frustrated novelist. But supposing, for a
moment, we accepted them at face value. Will they hold water ?
Take his cinematic technique, for example. Well, are we not Uving
in the age of the dnema i h not this period of history more fantastic,
more " incredible," than the simulacrum of it which we see unrolled

* Title : Antarctic Fugue ; Pushkin Press, London, 1948.
66

BLAISE CENDRARS

on the silver screen ? As for his sensationalism — have we forgotten
Gilles dc Rais, the Marquis de Sade, the Memoirs of Casanova ? As
for hyperbole, what of Pindar i As for prolixity and verbosity, what
about Jules Romains or Marcel Proust ? As for exaggeration and
deformation, what of Rabelais, Swift, Celine, to mention an anoma-
lous trinity ; As for lack of form, that perennial jackass which is
always kicking up its heels in the pages of Hterary reviews, have I not
heard cultured Europeans rant about the " vegetal *' aspect of Hindu
temples, the fa9ades of which arc studded with a riot of human,
animal and other forms i Have I not seen them twisting their Hps
in distaste when examining the amazing efflorescences embodied in
Tibetan scrolls ? No taste, eh ? No sense of proportion ? No
control i C'est ca. De la mesure avant tout ! These cultured
nobodies forget that their beloved exemplars, the Greeks, worked
with Cyclopean blocks, created monstrosities as well as apotheoses of
harmony, grace, form and spirit ; they forget perhaps that the
Cycladic sculpture of Greece surpassed in abstraction and simplifica-
tion anything which Brancusi or his followers ever attempted. The
very mythology of these worshippers of beauty, whose motto was
" Nothing to the extreme," is a revelation of the ** monstrous "
aspect of their being.

Oui, Cendrars is full of excrescences. There are passages which
swell up out of the body of his text Hke rank tumors. There are
detours, parentheses, asides, which are the embryonic pith and
substance of books yet to come. There is a grand efflorescence and
exfoHation, and there is also a grand wastage of material in his
books. Cendrars neither cribs and cabins, nor does he drain himself
completely. When the moment comes to let go, he lets go. When
it is expedient or efficacious to be brief, he is brief and to the point —
like a dagger. To me his books reflect his lack of fixed habits, or
better yet, his ability to break a habit. (A sign of real emancipation !)
In those swollen paragraphs, which are hke une mer houleusc and
which some readers, apparently, are unable to cope with, Cendrars
reveals his oceanic spirit. We who vaunt dear Shakespeare's mad-
ness, his elemental outbursts, are we to fear these cosmic gusts ?
We who swallowed the Pantagruel and Gargantua, via Urquhart,
are we to be daunted by catalogues of names, places, dates, events ?
We who produced the oddest writer in any tongue — Lewis Carroll —

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

are we to ahy away from the play of words, from the ridiculous, the
grotesque, the unspeakable or the " utterly impossible *' t It takes a
man to hold his breath as Cendrars does when he is about to unleash
one of his triple-page paragraphs without stop. A man ? A deep-
sea diver. A whale. A whale of a man, precisely.

What is remarkable is that this same man has also given us some
of the shortest sentences ever written, particularly in his poems and
prose poems. Here, in staccato rhythm— let us not forget that
before he was a writer he was a musician ! — ^he deploys a telegraphic
style. (It might also be called " telesthetic/') One can read it as
fast as Chinese, with whose written characters his vocables have a
curious affinity, to my way of thinking. This particular tech-
nique of Cendrars* creates a kind of exorcism— a deliverance from
the heavy weight of prose, from the impedimenta of grammar and
syntax, from the illusory intelligibility of the merely communicative
in speech. In VEubage, for example, we discover a sibylline quality
of thought and utterance. It is one of his curious books. An
extreme. Also a departure and an end. Cendrars is indeed difficult
to classify, though why we should want to classify him I don't
know. Sometimes I think of him as ** a writer's writer," though he
is definitely not that. But what I mean to say is that a writer has
much to learn from Cendrars. In school, I remember, we were
always being urged to take as models men like Macaulay, Coleridge,
Ruskin, or Edmund Burke — even de Maupassant. Why they didn't
say Shakespeare, Dante, Milton, I don't know. No professor ever
believed, I dare say, that any of us brats would turn out to be writers
one day. They were failures themselves, hence teachers. Cendrars has
made it clear that the only teacher, the only model, is Hfe itself
What a writer learns from Cendrars is to follow his nose, to obey Ufe's
commands, to worship no other god but life. Some interpreters will
have it that Cendrars means " the dangerous life." I don't believe
Cendrars would limit it thus. He means life pure and simple, in all
its aspects, all its ramifications, all its bypaths, temptations, hazards,
what not. If he is an adventurer, he is an adventurer in all realms of
life. What interests him is every phase of life. The subjects he has
touched on, the themes he has pursued, are encyclopaedic. Another
sign of" emancipation," this all-inclusive absorption in Hfr's myriad
manifestations. It is often when he seems most " realistic," for
68

BLAISE CENDRARS

example, that he tends to pull all the stops on his organ. The realist
is a meagre soul. He sees what is in front of him, Hke a horse with
blinders. Cendrars* vision is perpetually open ; it is almost as if he
had an extra eye buried in his crown, a skylight open to all the
cosmic rays. Such a man, you may be sure, will never complete his
life's work, because Hfe will always be a step ahead of him. Besides,
life knows no completion, and Cendrars is one with hfe. An
article by Pierre de Latil in La Gazette des Lettres, Paris, August 6, .
1949, informs us that Cendrars has projected a dozen or more books
to be written within the next few years. It is an astounding pro-
gram, considering that Cendrars is now in his sixties, that he has
no secretary, that he writes with his left hand, that he is restless
underneath, always itching to sally forth and sec more of the world,
that he actually detests writing and looks upon his work as forced
labor. He works on four or five books at a time. He will finish them
all, I am certain. I only pray that I Uve to read the trilogy of ** les
souvenirs humains ** called Archives de ma tour d'ivoire, which will
consist of : Hommes de lettres, Homtnes d'affaires and Vie des homnies
obscurs. Particularly the last-named . . .

I have long pondered over Cendrars* confessed insomnia. He
attributes it to his life in the trenches, if I remember rightly. True
enough, no doubt, but I surmise there are deeper reasons for it. At
any rate, what I wish to point out is that there seems to be a connec-
tion between his fecundity and his sleeplessness. For the ordinary
individual sleep is the restorative. Exceptional individuals— holy
men, gurus, inventors, leaders, men of affairs, or certain types of the v^
insane — are able to do with very Httle sleep. They apparently have ^
other means of replenishing their dynamic potential. Some men,
merely by varying their pursuits, can go on working with almost
no sleep. Others, Hke the yogi and the guru, in becoming more and
more aware and therefore more alive, virtually emancipate them-
selves from the thrall of sleep. (Why sleep if the purpose of Ufe is to
enjoy creation to the fullest ?) With Cendrars, I have the feeling
that in switching from active Hfe to writing, and vice versa, he
replenishes himself A pure supposition on my part. Otherwise I am
at a loss to account for a man burning the candle at both ends and
not consuming himself. Cendrars mentions somewhere that he is of
a line of long-Uved antecedents. He has certainly squandered his

^s^\

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

hereditary patrimony regally. But — he shows no signs of cracking up.
Indeed, he seems to have entered upon a period of second youth. He
is confident that when he reaches the ripe age of seventy he will be
ready to embark on new adventures. It will not surprise me in the
least if he does ; I can see him at ninety scaling the Himalayas or
embarking in the first rocket to voyage to the moon.

But to come back to the relation between his writing and his
sleeplessness ... If one examines the dates given at the end of his
books, indicating the time he spent on them, one is struck by the
rapidity with which he executed them as well as by the speed with
which (all good-sized books) they succeed one another. All this
impHes one thing, to my mind, and that is ** obsession." To write
one has to be possessed and obsessed. What is it that possesses and
obsesses Cendrars ? Life. He is a man in love with life — et c*est tout.
No matter if he denies this at times, no matter if he vilifies the times or
excoriates his contemporaries in the arts, no matter if he compares his
own recent past with the present and finds the latter lacking, no
matter if he deplores the trends, the tendencies, the philosophies and
behavior of the men of our epoch, he is the one man of our time who
has proclaimed and trumpeted the fact that today is profound and
beautifiil. And it is just because he has anchored himself in the midst
of contemporary life, where, as if firom a conning tower, he surveys
all Hfe, past, present and future, the Ufe of the stars as well as the
Ufe of the ocean depths, life in miniscule as well as the life grandiose,
that I seized upon him as a shining example of the right principle, the
right attitude towards life. No one can steep himself in the splendors
of the past more than Cendrars ; no one can hail the fiiture with
greater zest ; but it is the present, the eternal present, which he
glorifies and with which he alHes himself It is such men, and only
such men, who are in the tradition, who carry on. The others are
backward lookers, idolaters, or else mere wraiths of hopefiilness,
bonimenteurs. With Cendrars you strike ore. And it is because he
understands the present so profoundly, accepts it and is one with it,
that he is able to predict the fiiture so unerringly. Not that he sets
himself up as a soothsayer ! No, his prophetic remarks are made
casually and discreetly ; they are buried often in a maze of unrelated
material. In this he often reminds me of the good physician.
He knows how to take the pulse.- In fact, he knows all the
70

BLAISE CENDRARS

pulses, like the Chinese physicians of old. When he says of certain
men that they are sick, or of certain artists that they are corrupt or
fekes, or of poUtidans in general that they arc crazy, or of miUtary
men that they are criminals, he knows whereof he speaks. It is the
magister in him which is speaking.

He has, however, another way of speaking which is more endearing
to me. He can speak with tenderness. Lawrence, it will be remem-
bered, originally thought of calling the book known as Lady
Chatterleys Lover by the title " Tenderness." I mention Lawrence's
name because I remember vividly Cendrars' allusion to him on the
occasion of his memorable visit to the Villa Seurat. " You must
think a lot of Lawrence," he said questioningly. " I do," I repHed.
We exchanged a few words and then I recall him asking me fair and
square if I did not believe Lawrence to be overrated. It was the
metaphysical side of Lawrence, I gathered, that was not to his liking,
that was " suspect," I should say. (And it was just at this period that
I was engrossed in this particular aspect of Lawrence !) I am sure, at
any rate, that my defense of Lawrence was weak and unsustained.
To be truthful, I was much more interested in hearing Cendrars*
view of the man than in justifying my own. Often, later, in reading
Cendrars this word " tenderness " crossed my lips. It would escape
involuntarily, rouse me from my reverie. Futile though it be, I
would then indulge in endless speculation, comparing Lawrence's
tenderness with Cendrars*. They are, I now think, of two distinct
kinds. Lawrence's weakness is man, Cendrars' men. Lawrence
longed to know men better ; he wanted to work in common with
them. It is in Apocalypse that he has some of the most moving
passages — on the withering of the " societal " instinct. They create
real anguish in us — for Lawrence. They make us realize the tortures
he suffered in trying to be " a man among men." With Cendrars I
detect no hint of such deprivation or mutilation. In the ocean of
humanity Cendrars swims as bUthely as a porpoise or a dolphin. In
his narratives he is always together with men, one with them in
deed, one with them in thought. If he is a solitary, he is nevertheless
fully and completely a man. He is also the brother of all men.
Never does he set himself up as superior to his fellow man. Lawrence
diought himself superior, often, often — I think that is undeniable —
and very often he was anything but. Very often it is a lesser man who

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

" instructs " him. Or shames him. Lawrence had too great a love
for ** humanity " to understand or get along with his fellow man.

It is when we come to their respective fictional characters that we
sense the rift between these two figures. With the exception of the
self portraits, given in Sons and Lovers, Kangaroo, Aaron's Rod and
such like, all Lawrence's characters are mouthpieces for his philosophy
or the philosophy he wishes to depose. They arc ideational creatures,
moved about like chess pieces. They have blood in them all right,
but it is the blood which Lawrence has pumped into them. Cendrars*
characters issue from life and their activity stems from life's moving
vortex. They too, of course, acquaint us with his philosophy of life,
but obhquely, in the eUiptic manner of art.

The tenderness of Cendran exudes from all pores. He does not
spare his characters ; neither does he revile or castigate them. His
harshest words, let me say parenthetically, are usually reserved for
the poets and artists whose work he considers spurious. Aside firom
these diatribes, you will rarely find him passing judgment upon
others. What you do find is that in laying bare the weaknesses or
faults of his subjects he is unmasking, or endeavoring to unmask,
their essential heroic nature. All the diverse figures — ^human, all too
human — ^which crowd his books are glorified in their basic, intrinsic
being. They may or may not have been heroic in the face of death ;
they may or may not have been heroic before the tribunal of justice ;
but they are heroic in the common struggle to assert and uphold
their own primal being. I mentioned a while ago the book by Al
Jennings which Cendrars so ably translated. The very choice of this
book is indicative of my point. This mite of a man, this outlaw
with an exaggerated sense of justice and honor who is '* up for life '*
(but eventually pardoned by Theodore Roosevelt), this terror of
the West who welk over vvdth tenderness, is just the sort of man
Cendrars would choose to tell the world about, just the sort of man he
would uphold as being filled vdth the dignity of life. Ah, how I
should like to have been there when Cendrars eventually caught up
with him, in Hollywood of all places ! Cendrars has written of this
** brief encounter " and I heard of it myself from Al Jennings* own
Hps when I met him by chance a few years ago — in a bookshop
there in Hollywood.

In the books written since the Occupation, Cendrars has much to
72

BLAISB CENDRARS

say about the War — the First War, naturally, not only because
it was less inhuman but because the future course of his life,
I might say, was decided by it. He has also written about
the Second War, particularly about the fall of Paris and the
incredible exodus preceding it. Haunting pages, reminiscent
of Revelation. Equalled in war literature only by St. Exup6ry*s
Flight to Arras. (See the section of his book, Le Lotissement du Ciel,
which first appeared in the revue, Le Cheval de Troie, entitled:
Un Nouveau Patron pour V Aviation.)* In all these recent books
Cendrars reveals himself more and more intimately. So penetrative,
so naked, are these gUmpses he permits us that one instinctively
recoils. So sure, swift and deft are these revelations that it is Uke
watching a safecracker at work. In these flashes stand revealed the
whole swarm of intimates whose hves dovetail with his own.
Exposed through the lurid searchHght of his Cyclopean eye they arc
caught in the flux and surveyed fi:om every angle. Here there is
" completion ** of a sort. Nothing is omitted or altered for the sake
of the narrative. With these books the " narrative " is stepped up,
broadened out, the supports and buttresses battered away, in order
that the book may become part of life, swim with life's currents,
and remain forever identical with Hfe. Here one comes to grips with
the men Cendrars truly loves, the men he fought beside in the trenches
and whom he saw wiped out hke rats, the Gypsies of the Zone whom
he consorted with in the good old days, the ranchers and other
figures firom the South American scene, the porters, concierges,
tradesmen, truck drivers, and " people of no account " (as we say),
and it is with the utmost sympathy and understanding that he
treats these latter. What a gallery ! Infinitely more cxdting, in
every sense of the word, than Balzac's gallery of " types." This
is the real Human Comedy. No sociological studies, k k Zola. No
satirical puppet show, i la Thackeray. No pan-humanity, ^ la
Jules Romains. Here in these latter books, though minus the aim and
purpose of the great Russian, but perhaps with another aim which
we will understand better later, at any rate, with equal amplitude,
violence, humor, tenderness and rehgious — ^yes, reHgious — fervor,
Cendrars gives us the French equivalent of Dostoievsky's outpour- \
ings in such works as The Idiot, The Possessed, The Brothers Karamaxov. \
* Editions DenoSl, Paris, 1949.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

A production which could only be realized, consummated, in die
ripe middle years of life.

Everything now forthcoming has been digested a thousand
times. Again and again Cendrars has pushed back — ^where ; into
what deep well ? — the multiform story of his life. This heavy,
molten mass of experience raw and refined, subde and crude,
digested and predigested, which had been lodging in his entrails like
a torpid and amorphous dinosaur idly flapping its rudimentary
wings, this cargo destined for eventual delivery at the exact time
and the exact place, demanded a touch of dynamite to be set off.
From June, 194.0, to the 21st of August, 1943, Cendrars remained
awesomely silent. II s'est tu. Chut ! Motus ! What starts him
writing again is a visit fi^om his friend Edouard Peisson, as he relates
in the opening pages o£V Homme Foudroyi. En passant he evokes the
memory of a certain night in 1915, at the front — ** la plus terrible que
j'ai v&ue." There were other occasions, one suspects, before the
critical visit of his friend Peisson, which might have served to
detonate the charge. But perhaps on these occasions the fuse burned
out too quickly or was damp or smothered under by the weight of
world events. But let us drop these useless speculations. Let us
dive into Section 17 of Uiw Nouveau Patron Pour V Aviation . . .

This brief section begins with the recollection of a sentence of
R^my de Gourmont's : " And it shows great progress that,
where women prayed before, cows now chew the cud ..." In
a few lines comes this from Cendrars* own mouth :

Beginning on May loth, Surrealism descended upon
earth : not the works of absurd poets who pretend to be
such and who, at most, arc but sou-realistes since they
preach the subconscious, but the work of Christ, the oiily
poet of the sur-real . . .

If ever I had faith, it was on that day that grace should
have touched me . . .

Follow two paragraphs dealing in turbulent, compressed fury
with the ever execrable condition of war. Like Goya, he repeats :
**fai vu** The second paragraph ends thus :

The sun had stopped. The weather forecast announced
an ami-cyclone lasting forty days. It couldn't be ! For
74

BLAISE CBNDRARS

which reason everything went wrong : gear-wheels
would not lock, machinery everywhere broke down :
the dead-point of everything.

The next five lines vdll ever remain in my mempry :

No, on May loth, humanity was far from adequate
to the event. Lord I Above, the sky was like a backside
with gleaming buttocks and the sun an inflamed anus.
What else but shit could ever have issued from it ?
And modem man screamed with fear . . .

This man of August the 21st, 1943, who is exploding in all
directions at once, had of course already delivered himself of a wad
of books, not least among them, we shall probably discover one
day, being the tea. volumes of Notre Pain Quotidien which he com-
posed intermittently over a period of ten years in a chateau outside
Paris, to which manuscripts he never signed his name, confiding the
chests containing this material to various safety vaults in different
parts of South America and then throwing the keys^away. ("Je
voudrais rester VAnonymey* he says.)

In the books begun at Aix-en-Provence are voluminous notes,
placed at the ends of the various sections. I will quote just one, fiom
Bourlinguer (the section on Genoa), which constitutes an everlasting
tribute to the poet so dear to French men of letters :

Dear Gerard de Nerval, man of the crowd, night-
walker, slang-ist, impenitent dreamer, neurasthenic lover
of the Capital's small theatres and the vast necropoli of
the East : architect of Solomon's Temple, translator of
Faust, personal secretary to the Queen of Sheba, Druid of
the ist and 2nd class, sentimental vagabond of the fle-de-
France, last of the Valois, child of Paris, lips of gold, you
hung younelf in the mouth of a sewer after shooting your
poems up to the sky and now your shade swings ever
before them, ever larger and larger, between Notre-
Dame and Saint-Merry, and your fiery Chimearas range
this square of the heavens like six dishevelled and terrifying
comets. By your appeal to the New Spirit you for ever
disturbed our feeling today : and nowadays men could
not go on living wimout this anxiety :

* The Eagle has already passed : the New Spirit calls
me ... ' (Horus, str. Ill, v. 9)

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

On page 244, in the same body of notes, Cendrars states the
following : " The other day I was sixty and it is only today, as I reach
the end of the present tale, that I begin to believe in my vocation of
writer . . /* Put that in your pipe and smoke it, you lads of twenty-five,
thirty and forty years of age who are constandy belly-aching because
you have not yet succeeded in establishing a reputation. Be glad that
you are still alive, still living your life, still garnering experience, still
enjoying the bitter fiiiits of isolation and neglect !

I would have Hked to dwell on many singular passages in these
recent books replete with the most astounding facts, incidents,
Hterary and historic events, scientific and occult allusions, curiosa of
hterature, bizarre types of men and women, feasts, drunken bouts,
humorous escapades, tender idylls, anecdotes concerning remote
places, times, legends, extraordinary colloquies with extraordinary
individuals, reminiscences of golden days, burlesques, fantasies,
myths, inventions, introspections and eviscerations ... I would
have liked to speak at length of that singular author and even more
singular man, Gustave Le Rouge, the author of 312 books which
the reader has most likely never heard of, the variety, nature, style
and contents of which Cendrars dwells on con amore ; I would like to
have given the reader some Httle flavor of the closing section. Vendetta,
from VHomnte Foudroyi, which is direct firom the hps of Sawo the
Gypsy ; I would like to have taken the reader to La Comue, chez
Paquita, or to that wonderful hideout in the South of France where,
hoping to finish a book in peace and tranquiHty, Cendrars abandons
the page which he had sHpped into the typewriter after writing a
line or two and never looks at it again but gives himself up to pleasure,
idleness, reverie and drink ; I would like to have given the reader at
least an inkling of that hair-raising story of the " homuncuU " which
Cendrars recounts at length in Bourlinguer (the section called
" G^es "), but if I were to dip into these extravaganzas I should
never be able to extricate myself

I shall jump instead to the last book received from Cendrars, the
one called La Banlieue de Paris, published by La Guilde du Livre,
Lausanne. It is illustrated with 130 photographs by Robert Doisneau,
sincere, moving, unvarnished documents which eloquently supple-
ment the text. Dc nouveau unc belle collaboration. (Vive les
collaborateurs, les vrais ! ) The text is fairly short — fifty large pages.
76

BLAISE CBNDR A R S

But haunting pages, written sur le vif. (From the 15th of July to
the 31st of August, 1949.) If there were nothing more noteworthy
in these pages than Cendrars' description of a night at Saint-Denis
on the eve of an aborted revolution this short text would be worth
preserving. But there are other passages equally sombre and arresting,
or nostalgic, poignant, saturated with atmosphere, saturated with the
pullulating effervescence of the sordid suburbs. Mention has often
been made of Cendrars* rich vocabulary, of the poetic quaUty of his
prose, of his abiHty to incorporate in his rhapsodic passages the mon-
trous jargon and terminology of science, industry, invention. This
document, which is a sort of retrospective eltgy, is an excellent
example of his virtuosity. In memory he moves in on the suburbs
from East, South, North, and West, and, as if armed with a magic
wand, resuscitates the drama of hope, longing, failure, ennui, despair,
frustration, misery and resentment which devours the denizens of this
vast belt. In one compact paragraph, the second in the section called
" Nord," Cendrars gives a graphic, physical summary of all that
makes up the hideous suburban terrain. It is a bird's-eye view of the
ravages which follow in the wake of industry. A Httle later he gives
us a detailed description of the interior of one of England's war plants,
" a shadow factory," which is in utter contrast to the foregoing. It is a
masterful piece of reportage in which the cannon plays the role of ved-
ette. But in paying his tribute to the factory, Cendrars makes it clear
where he stands. It is the one kind of work he has no stomach for.
** Mieux vaut etre un vagabond," is his dictum. In a few swift lines
he volplanes over the eternal bloody war business and, with a cry of
shame for the Hiroshima " experiment," he launches the staggering
figures of the last war's havoc tabulated by a Swiss review for the use
and the benefit of those who are preparing the coming carnival of
death. They belong, these figures, just as the beautifiil arsenals belong
and the hideous banHeue. And finally, for he has had them in mind
throughout, Cendrars asks : " What of the children ? Who are
they i Whence do they come ? Where are they going ? " Referring
us back to the photos of Robert Doisneau, he evokes the figures of
David and GoUath — to let us know what indeed the Httle ones may
have in store for us.
No mere document, this book. It is something I should Hke to

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

own in a breast-pocket edition, to carry with me should I ever
wander forth again. Something to take one's bearings by . . .

It has been my lot to prowl the streets, by night as well as day, of
these God-forsaken precincts of woe and misery, not only here in my
own country but in Europe too. In their spirit of desolation they are
all alike. Those which ring the proudest cities of the earth are the
worst. They stink like chancres. When I look back on my past I can
scarcely see anything else, smell anything else but these festering
empty lots, these filthy, shrouded streets, these rubbish heaps of
jerries indiscriminately mixed with the garbage and refuse, the for-
lom, utterly senseless household objects, toys, broken gadgets, vases
and pisspots abandoned by the poverty-stricken, hopeless, helpless
creatures who make up the population of these districts. In moments
of high fettle I have threaded my way amidst the bric-a-brac and
shambles of these quarters and thought to myself : What a poem !
What a documentary film ! Ofi«n I recovered my sober senses only
by cursing and gnashing my teeth, by flying into wild, fiitile rages,
by picturing myself a benevolent dictator who would eventually
" restore order, peace and justice." I have been obsessed for weeks
and months on end by such experiences. But I have never succeeded
in making music of it. (And to think that Erik Satie, whose domicile
Robert Doisneau gives us in one of the photos, to think that this man
also ** made music " in that crazy building is something which makes
my scalp itch.) No, I have never succeeded in making music of this
insensate material. I have tried a number of times, but my spirit is
still too young, too filled with repulsion. I lack that abiHty to recede, to
assimilate, to pound the mortar with' a chemist's skill. But Cendrars
has succeeded, and that is why I take my hat off to him. Salut, cher
Blaise Cendrars ! You are a musician. Salute ! And glory be ! We
have need of the poets of night and desolation as well as the other sort.
We have need of comforting words — and you give them — as well
as vitrioHc diatribes. When I say " we " I mean all of us. Ours is a
thirst unquenchable for an eye such as yours, an eye which condemns
without passing judgment, an eye which wounds by its naked glance
and heals at the same time. Especially in America do " we ** need
your historic touch, your velvety backward sweep of the plume. Yes,
we need it perhaps more than anything you have to offer us. History
has passed over our scarred, terrains vagues at a gallop. It has left us
78

BLAISE CENDRARS

a few names, a few absurd monuments — and a veritable chaos of
bric-a-brac. The one race which inhabited these shores and which
did not mar the work of God was the redskins. Today they occupy
the wastelands. For their ** protection " we have organized a pious
sort of concentration camp. It has no barbed wires, no instruments of
torture, no armed guards. We simply leave them there to die out . . .

But I camiot end on this dolorous note, which is only the backfire
of those secret rumblings which begin anew whenever the past crops
up. There is always a rear view to be had from these crazy edifices
which our minds inhabit so tenaciously. The view from Satie's
back window is the kind I mean. Wherever in the ** zone " there is a
cluster of shabby buildings, there dwell the Uttle people, the salt of
the earth, as wc say, for without them we would be left to starve,
without them that crust which is thrown to the dogs and which we
pounce on Uke wolves would have only the savor of death and re-
venge. Through those oblong windows from which the bedding
hangs I can see my pallet in the comer where I have flopped for the
night, to be rescued again in miraculous fashion the next sundown,
always by a " nobody," which means, when we get to understand
human speech, by an angel in disguise. What matter if with the coflfee
one swallows a mislaid emmenagogue ? What matter if a stray roach
clings to one's tattered garments ? Looking at Hfe from the rear
window one can look down at one's past as into a still mirror in
which the days of desperation merge with the days of joy, the days
of peace, and the days of deepest friendship. Especially do I feel
this way, think this way, when I look into my French backyard.
There all the meaningless pieces of my hfe fall into a pattern. I sec
no waste motion. It is all as clear as ** The Cracow Poem " to a chess
fiend. The music it gives oflf is as simple as were the strains of
" Sweet AUce Ben Bolt " to my childish ears. More, it is beautiful,
for as Sir H. Rider Haggard says in his autobiography : " The naked
truth is always beautiful, even when it tells of evil."

My dear Cendrars, you must at times have sensed a kind of envy
in me for all that you have Hved through, digested, and vomited
forth transformed, transmogrified, transubstantiated. As a child you
played by Virgil's tomb ; as a mere lad you tramped across Europe,
Russia, Asia, to stoke the furnace in some forgotten hotel in Pekiu ;
as a young man, in the bloody days of the Legion, you elected to

THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

remain a corporal, no more ; as a war victim you begged for alms
in your own dear Paris, and a litde later you were on the bum in
New York, Boston, New Orleans, Frisco . . . You have roamed
far, you have idled the days away, you have burned the candle at
both ends, you have made &iends and enemies, you have dared to
write the truth, you have known how to be silent, you have pursued
every path to the end, and you are still in your prime, stiU building
castles in the air, stiU breaking plans, habits, resolutions, because to
Hue is your primary aim, and you are living and will continue to live
both in the flesh and in the roster of the illustrious ones. How fooHsh,
how absurd of me to think that I might be of help to you, that by
putting in my Htde word for you here and there, as I said before, I
would be advancing your cause. You have no need of my help or
of anyone's. Just Uving your life as you do you automatically aid
us, all of us, everywhere where life is lived. Once again I doff my hat
to you. I bow in reverence. I have not the right to salute you because
I am not your peer. I prefer to remain your devotee, your loving
disciple, your spiritual brother in der Ewigkeit.

You always close your greetings with " ma main amie." I grasp
that warm left hand you proffer and I wring it with joy, with
gratitude, and with an everlasting benediction on my Hps.

RIDER HAGGARD

Since mentioning Rider Haggard's name, his book, She, has fallen
into my hands. I have now read about two-thirds of it, my first
glance at the book since the year 1905 or 1906, as best I remember.
I feel impeUed to relate, as quietly and restrained as I can, the extra-
ordinary reactions which I am now experiencing as a result of
this second reading. To begin with, I must confess that not until I
came to Chapter 11. " The Plain of K6r," did I have the faintest
recollection of reading a word of this startling book before. I was
certain, nevertheless, that the moment I encountered that mysterious
creature called Ayesha (She) my memory would come ahve. It
has fallen out just as I anticipated. As with The Lion of the North,
referred to earUer, so in She I rediscover the emotions which first
overcame me upon coming face to face with a " femme fatale."
{The femme fatale !) Ayesha, the true name of this ageless beauty,*
this lost soul who refuses to die until her beloved returns to earth
again, occupies a position — at least, in my mind — comparable
to the Sim in the galaxy of immortal lovers, all of them cursed
with a deathless beauty. In this starry firmament Helen of Troy is
but a pale moon. Indeed, and only today can I say it with certitude,
Helen was never real to me. Ayesha is more than real. She is super-
real, in every sense of that maHgned word. About her personage the
author has spun a web of such proportions that it almost deserves
the appellation " cosmogonic." Helen is legendary, mythical —
de la htt^rature. Ayesha is of the eternal elements, both discamate
and incarnate. She is of the dark mothers, of which mysterious
race we get hints and echoes in Germanic Hterature. But before
I babble on about the wonders of this narrative, which dates firom
the next to the last decade of the Nineteenth Century, let me speak
of certain revelations concerning my own character and identity
which are connected with it.

* Also the name of Mahomet's second and favorite wife.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

As I write this book I keep jotting down the titles of books I
have read, as they return to memory. It is a game which has taken
complete possession of me. The reasons for it I have already begun to
perceive. The primary one is that I am rediscovering my own
identity which, unknown to me, had been smothered or stifled
in the pages of certain books. That is to say, in finding myself,
through certain authors who acted as my intermediaries, I had also
(without knowing it) lost myself And this must have happened
over and over again. For, what happens to me every day now is
this : the mere recollection of a forgotten tide brings to life not
only the aura of the book's untouchable personaHty but the
knowledge and the reality of my former selves. I need not add
that something approaching awe, dread, consternation is beginning
to take hold of me. I am coming to grips with myself in a wholly
new and unexpected way. It is almost as if I were embarked on
that journey to Tibet I have so frequently alluded to and which I
have less and less need to make as times goes on and I myself go on,
crab-wise, as seems to be my destiny.

Not for naught, I perceive more and more profoundly, have I
clung to childhood memories ; not for naught have I attached
such importance to "the boys in the street," our Hfe together, our
gropings for truth, our struggle to understand the perverse order of
society in which we found ourselves enmeshed and firom whose grip
we vainly sought to free ourselves.

Just as there are tv/o orders of human knowledge, two kinds of
wisdom, two traditions, two everything, so in boyhood we came
to realize that there were two sources of instruction : the one
which we discovered ourselves and secredy strove to guard, and
the other which we learned about in school and which impressed
us as not only dull and fiitile, but diaboUcally false and perverted.
The one kind of instruction nourished us, the other undermined us.
And I mean this " literally and in every sense," to use Rimbaud's
expression.

Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed
to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations,
society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make
the adult revolutionary cower and cringe. His would probably
not be a comfortable or benevolent pattern of organization, but
82

RIDER HAGGARD

it would reflect justice, splendor and integrity. It would accelerate
the vital pulse of life, abet and augment life. And what could be
more terrifying to adults than such a prospect ?

" A bas I'histoire ! " (Rimbaud's words.) Do you begin to see
the pregnancy of them ?

The books which we recommended to one another on the q.t.,
the books which we devoured stealthily at all hours of the day and
night — and in the weirdest places sometimes ! — these books which
we discussed in the empty lot, or on a street comer under an arc
light, or at the edge of a cemetery, or in an icehouse of our own
construction or a cave dug into a hillside, or in any secret place of
gathering, for we always met as a clan, as blood brothers, as mem-
bers of a secret order — ^The Order of Youth Defending the Traditions
of Youth ! — these books were part of our daily instruction, part
of our Spartan discipline and our spiritual training. They were
the heritage of anterior orders, inconspicuous groups like ourselves,
who from earUest times fought to keep aHve and to prolong, if
possible, the golden age of youth. We were not aware then that
our elders, some of them at least, looked back on this hallowed
period of their Hves with envy and longing ; we had no suspicion
that our glorious dynasty would be referred to as " the period of
conflict." We did not know that we were htde primitives, or
archaic heroes, saints, martyrs, gods or demigods. We knew that
we were — and that was sufiicient. We wanted a voice in the govern-
ment of our affairs : we did not want to be treated as embryonic
adults. For most of us, neither father nor mother were objects
of veneration, much less of idolatry. We opposed their dubious
authority as best we could — and at great odds, it goes without
saying. Our law, and it was the only voice of authority we truly
respected, was the law of Hfe. That we understood this law was
revealed by the games we played, that is, by the way we played
them and the inferences we drew from the way the various players
entered into them. We estabHshed genuine hierarchies ; we passed
judgment according to our various levels of understanding, our
various levels of being. We were conscious of the peak as well
as of the base of the pyramid. We had faith, reverence and dis-
cipline. We created our own ordeals and tests of power and fitness.
We abided by the decisions of our superiors, or our chief. He

The books in my life

was a king who manifested the dignity and the power of his rank
— and he never ruled a day beyond his time !

I speak of these &cts with some emotion because it amazes me
that adults should ever forget them, as I sec they do. We all
experience a thrill when, having put the past behind us, we suddenly
find ourselves among the ** primitives." I mean now the true
primitive : early man. The study of anthropology has one great
merit — it permits us to Uve again as youths. The true student of
primitive peoples has respect, deep respect, for these " ancestors "
who exist side by side with us but who do not ** grow up.** He
finds that man in the early stages of his development is in no wise
inferior to man in the later stages ; some have even found early
man to be superior, in most respects, to late man. ** Early ** and
** late " are here used according to the vulgar acceptation of the
terms. We know nothing, in truth, about the origin of early man
or whether, indeed, he was young or decadent. And we know
httle about the origin of " homo sapiens,** though we pretend
much. There is a gap between the farthest reaches of history and
the rehcs and evidences of prehistoric man, branches of which,
such as the Cro-Magnon, baffle us by the evidences of their intel-
hgence and aesthetic sensibiHty. The wonders which we constantly
expect the archaeologist to imearth, the links in our very slender
thread of knowledge about our own species, are supplied incessantly
and in the most amazing ways by those whom we refer to con-
descendingly as " imaginative ** writers. I limit myself to these
latter for the moment since the others, sometimes termed " occult **
or " esoteric ** writers, are still less accredited. They are for " second
childhood" (sic).

Rider Haggard is one of those imaginative writers who
undoubtedly fed from many streams. We think of him now as a
writer of boys* books, content to let his name fade into obHvion.
Perhaps only when our scientific explorers and investigators stumble
upon the truths revealed through imagination will we recognize
the true stature of such a writer.

" What is imagination ? ** asks Rider Haggard in the midst of
his narrative. And he answers : " Perhaps it is a shadow of the
intangible truth, perhaps it is the soul*s thought ! "

It was in the imagination that Blake Hved entirely. It was imagin-
84

RIDER HAGGARD

ation which led a humble grocery boy (Schliemann), fired by his
reading of Homer, to go in search of Troy, Tiryns and Mycenae.
And what of Jacob Boehme ? What of that intrepid Frenchman,
Caill^, the first white man to enter Timbuctoo and come out
alive ? What an epic !

Curious, but just about the time that I first became acquainted
with the mysteries of Egypt, the dazzling history of Crete, the
bloody annals of the House of Atreus, just when I am overwhelmed
by my first contact with such themes as reincarnation, spUt per-
sonality, the Holy Grail, resurrection and immortality, and so on,
via such ** romancers " as Herodotus, Tennyson, Scott, Sicnkiewicz,
Hcnty, Bulwer-Lytton, Marie Corelli, Robert Louis Stevenson
and others, many others, all these so-called legends, myths and
superstitious beUefs were beginning to take substance in fact.
SchHemann, Sir Arthur Evans, Frazer, Frobenius, Annie Besant,
Madame Blavatsky, Paul Radin, a whole flock of courageous
pioneers had been busy unveiling the truth in one realm after
another, all interlocked, all contributory in breaking the spell of
defeat and paralysis in which the doctrines of the Nineteenth
Century held us. The new century opens with promise and
splendor ; the past comes aHve again, but tangibly, substantially,
and with almost greater reahty than the present.

When I stood amid the ruins of Knossos and of Mycenae did
my thoughts turn to school books, to my penal instructors and
the enchanting tales they told us ? No. I thought of the stories
I had read as a child ; I saw the illustrations of those books I had
thought buried in obHvion ; I thought of our discussions in the
street and the amazing speculations we had indulged in. I recalled
my own private speculation about all these exciting, mysterious
themes connected with past and future. Looking out over the plain
of Argos from Mycenae, I Uved over again — and how vividly 1
— the tale of the Argonauts. Gazing upon the Cyclopean walls
of Tiryns I recalled the tiny illustration of the wall in one of my
wonder books — ^it corresponded exactly with the reaHty confiront-
ing me. Never, in school, had a history professor even attempted
to make Hving for us these glorious epochs of the past which every
child enters into naturally as soon as he is able to read. With what
childhke faith does the hardy explorer pursue his grim task ! We

THI BOOKS IN MY LIPI

Icam nothing from the pedagogues. The true educators arc the
adventurers and wanderers, the men who plunge into the living
plasm of history, legend, myth.

A moment ago I spoke of the world youth might create, if given
a chance. I have noticed repeatedly how frightening to parents
is the thought of educating a child according to their own private
notions. As I write I recall a momentous scene connected with
this subject which passed between the mother of my first child
and myself. It was in the kitchen of our home, and it followed
upon some heated words of mine about the futility and absurdity
of sending the child to school. Thoroughly engrossed, I had gotten
up from the table and was pacing back and forth in the Httle room.
Suddenly I heard her ask, almost frantically : '* But where would
you begin ? How ? " So deep in thought was I that the full import
of her words came to me bien en retard. Pacing back and forth,
head down, I found myself up against the hall door just as her
words penetrated my consciousness. And at that very moment
my eyes came to rest on a small knot in the panel of the door ?
How would I begin i Where i " Why there ! Anywhere !*' I
bellowed. And pointing to the knot in the wood I launched into
a brilliant, devastating monologue that Hterally swept her off her
feet. I must have carried on for a fiill half hour, hardly knowing
what I was saying but swept along by a torrent of ideas long pent
up. What gave it paprika, so to speak, was the exasperation and
disgust which welled up with the recollection of my experiences
in school. I began with that Httle knot of wood, how it came about,
what it meant, and thence found myself treading, or rushing,
through a veritable labyrinth of knowledge, instinct, wisdom,
intuition and experience. Everything is so divinely connected,
so beautifully interrelated — how could one possibly be at a loss
to undertake the education of a child i Whatever we touch, see,
smell or hear, from whatever point we begin, we are on velvet.
It is like pushing buttons that open magical doors. It works by
itself, creates its own traction and momentum. There is no need
to ** prepare " the child for his lesson : the lesson itself is a kind of
enchantment. The child longs to know ; he Hterally hungers and
thirsts. And so docs the adult, if wc could but dissipate the hypnotic
thrall which subjugates him.
86

( ftlDJiR ttAGGARD

To what lengths the teacher may go, to what heights he may
rise, what powers he may draw on, we have but to turn to the
story of Helen Keller's awakening to learn. There was a great
teacher, this Miss SulUvan. A pupil deaf, dumb and blind— what
a task to confront ! The miracles she accomplished were bom
of love and patience. Patience, love, understanding. But above
all, patience. Whoever has not read the amazing Hfe of Helen Keller
has missed one of the great chapters in the history of education.

When I came to read of Socrates and of the Peripatetic schools,
when later in Paris I roamed through the precincts haunted by
Dante (the university curricula were then conducted out of doors
. . . there is a street in this district, near Notre Dame, named after
the very straw they slept on, these ardent students of the Middle
Ages), when I read of the origins of our postal system and the
part played in it by university students (who were the runners),
when I thought of that lifelike education I had unwittingly received
in such places as Union Square and Madison Square, where the
soapbox orators held forth, when I recalled the heroic roles, which
in truth were educational roles, played by such figures of the pubHc
square as Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, Carlo Tresca, Giovanitti, Big
Bill Haywood, Jim Larkin, Hubert Harrison and such like, I was
more than ever convinced that as boys, on our own, we were on
the right track : we had sensed that education was a vital process,
one acquired in the midst of Hfe by Hving and wrestling with Hfe.
I felt closer then to Plato, Pythagoras, Epictetus, Dante and all
the ancient illustrious ones than ever before or since. When my
Hindu messenger boys in the telegraph company told me of Tagore's
famous " Shantiniketan," when I read of Ramakrishna's bright
abode, when I thought of Saint Francis and the birds, I knew that
the world was wrong and that education as it is conducted today
is disastrous. We who have sat behind closed doors on hard benches
in foul rooms under stem eyes, hostile eyes, we have been betrayed,
stunted, martyrized. A bas les ^oles ! Vive le plein air 1 Once
again, I say, I plan to read Emile. What matter if Rousseau's theories
proved a fiasco ? I shall read him as I read the works of Ferrer,
Montessori, Pestalozzi and all the others. Anything to put a spike
in our present system which turns out dolts, jackasses, tame ducks,
weathervanes, bigots and blind leaders of the blind. If needs be,
let us take to the jungle !

«7

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Behold the lot of man ! Certainly it shall overtake us,
and we shall sleep. Certainly, too, we shall awake and
Hve again, and again shall sleep, and so on and so on,
through periods, spaces, and times, from aeon unto aeon,
till the world is dead, and the worlds beyond the world
are dead, and naught Hveth save the Spirit that is life . . .

Thus speaks Ayesha in the tombs of Kor.

A boy wonders mightily over such a phrase as the last — ** and
naught Hveth save the Spirit that is Life.** If he was sent to church
as well as to school, he heard much about the Spirit from the pulpit.
But from the pulpit such talk falls on deaf ears. It is only when one
becomes awake — twenty, thirty, forty years later — that the words
of the Gospel acquire depth and meaning. The Church is wholly
unrelated to the other activities of a boy's Hfe. All that remains of
this discipline, this instruction, is the awesome, majestic sound of
the English language when it was in flower. The rest is jumble and
confusion. There is no initiation, such as the common " savage "
receives. Nor can there be any spiritual blossoming. The world
of the chapel and the world outside are distinct and utterly apart.
The language and behavior of Jesus do not conform to sense
until one has passed through sorrow and travail, until one has
become desperate, lost, utterly forsaken and abandoned.
. That there is something beyond, above, and anterior to earthly
Hfe, every boy instinctively divines. It is only a few years since
he himself Hved wholly in the Spirit. He has an identity which
manifests itself at birth. He struggles to preserve this prcdous
identity. He repeats the rituals of his primitive forbears, he rcHves
the struggles and ordeals of mythical heroes, he organizes his own
secret order— to preserve a sacred tradition. Neither parents,
teachers nor preachers play any part in this all-important domain
of youth. Looking back upon myself as a boy, I feel exactly like
a member of the lost tribe of Israel. Some, like Alain-Foumier
in The Wanderer^ are never able to desert this secret order of youth.
Bruised by every contact with the world of adults, they immolate
themselves in dream and reverie. Especially in the realm of love
are they made to suffer. OccasionaUy they leave us a Httle book,
a testament of the true and ancient faith, which wc read with dim
88

RIDBR HAGGARD

eyes, marvelling over its sorcery, aware, but too late, that we are
looking at ourselves, that we are weeping over our own fate.

More than ever do I beUeve that at a certain age it becomes
imperative to reread the books of childhood and youth. Else we
may go to the grave not knowing who we are or why we Hved,

A stonyhearted mother is our earth, and stones are the~>
bread she gives her children for their daily food. Stones
to eat and bitter water for their thirst, and stripes for/
tender nurture.

A boy wonders if it be truly thus. Such thoughts fill him with
anguish and dismay. He wonders again when he reads that " out
of good Cometh evil and out of evil good." Familiar though it be,
coming from the mouth of Ayesha the .thought troubles him.
Of such matters he has heard Httle that was not mere echo. He
surmises that he is indeed in some mysterious fane.

But it is when Ayesha explains that it is not by force but by
terror that she reigns, when she exclaims — "My empire is of the
imagination " — it is then a boy is startled to the core. The imagination ?
He has not heard yet of "the undenominated legislators of the
world." Well he has not. There is a mightier thought here, some-
thing which hfts us above the world and all question of dominion
over it. There is the hint — at least for a boy ! — that if man only
dared to imagine the dazzling possibiHties Hfe oflfers he would realize
them to the full. There creeps over him a suspicion, even if fleeting,
that age, death, evil, sin, ugliness, crime and firustration are but
limitations conceived by man and imposed by man upon himself
and his feUow man ... In this fleeting moment one is shaken
to the roots. One begins to question everything. The result, need-
less to say, is that he is covered with mockery and ridicule. " Thou
art foolish, my son ! " That is the refrain.

There will come similar confrontations with the written word,
more and more of them, as time goes on. Some will be even more
shattering, more impenetrable. Some will send him reeling to
the brink of madness. And ever and always none to ofler a helping
hand. No, the farther one advances the more one stands alone.
One becomes Hke a naked infant abandoned in the wilderness.

THE BOOKS IK MY LIPB

Finally one runs amok or one conforms. At this juncture the drama
surrounding one's " identity " is played out for good and all. At
this point the die is cast irrevocably. One joins up — or one takes
to the jungle. From boy to wage earner, husband, father, then
judge— it all seems to take place in the twinkle of an eye. One
does one*s best — that age-old excuse. Meanwhile life passes us by.
Our backs ever bent to receive the lash, we have only to murmur
a few words of gratitude and our pcrsecuton accept our reverence.
Only one hope remains— to become oneself tyrant and executioner.
From " The Place of Life," where one took his stance as a boy,
one passes over into the Tomb of Death, the only death which
man has a right to avoid and evade : liuing death.

** There is one being, one law and one feith, as there is only
one race of man," says EHphas Levi in his celebrated work, The
History of Magic.

I would not be rash enough to say that a boy understands such
a statement but I will say that he is much nearer to understanding
it than the so-called "wise" adult. The boy prodigy, Arthur
Rimbaud — that sphinx of modem literature — we have reason to
beheve was obsessed by this idea. In a study devoted to him* I
dubbed him " The Columbus of Youth." I felt that he had pre-
empted this domain. Because of his refusal to surrender the vision
of truth which he had glimpsed as a mere boy he turned his back
on poetry, broke with his confreres, and, in accepting a Hfe of brute
toil, Hterally committed suicide. In the hell of Aden he asks :
*' What ani I doing here ? " In the famous Lettre d*un Voyant
we have intimations of a thought which Levi has expressed thus :
"It may be understood in a day to come that seeing is actually
speaking and that the consciousness of light is a twilight of eternal
hfe in being." It is in this singular twilight that many boys Hve their
days. Is it any wonder then that certain books, originally intended
for adults, should be appropriated by boys ?

Speaking of the Devil, Levi says : " We would point out that
whatsoever has a name exists ; speech may be uttered in vain,
but in itself it cannot be vain, and it has a meaning invariably."
The ordinary adult finds it difficult to accept such a statement.

* Serialized in the annual anthologies, Neti/ DireetioHs K and New
Directions XI.

RIDER HAGGARD

Even the writer, particularly the "cultured" writer, for whom
presumably the " word " is sacred, finds this thought unpalatable.
A boy, on the other hand, if such a statement were explained to
him, would find truth and meaning in it. For him nothing is " in
vain " ; neither is anything too incredible, too monstrous, for
him to swallow. Our children are at home in a world which seems
to terrify and stupefy us. I am not thinking altogether of the sadistic
trend which has come to the fore ; I am thinking rather of the
unknown worlds, microcosmic and macrocosmic, whose impinge-
ment on our own quaking world of feeble reality has now become
oppressive and menacing. Our grown-up boys, the scientists,
prate about the imminent conquest of the moon ; our children
have already voyaged far beyond the moon. They are ready, at
a moment's notice, to take off for Vega — and beyond. They beg
our supposedly superior intellects to furnish them with a new
cosmogony and a new cosmology. They have grown intolerant
of our naive, limited, antiquated theories of the universe.

If Rimbaud may be said to have broken his heart with chagrin
because of his failure to win his contemporaries over to a new —
and truly modem — ^view of man, if he surrendered all desire to
estabHsh a new heaven and a new earth, we now know why. The
time was not ripe. Nor is it yet, apparently. (Though we should
beware more and more of all " seeming " obstacles, hindrances
and barriers.) The rhythm of time has been accelerated almost
beyond comprehension. We are moving towards the day, and
with frightening speed, when past, present and future wiU appear
as one. The millennium ahead will not resemble, in duration, any
like period in the past. It may be like the wink of an eye.

But to return to She . . . The chapter in which Ayesha is con-
sumed in the flame of life — an extraordinary piece of writing ! —
is burned into my being. It was at this point in the narrative that
I came awake — and remembered. It was because of this gruesome,
harrowing event that the book remained with me all these years.
That I had difficulty in summoning it from the depths of memory
I attribute to the naked horror which it inspired. In the brief space
which Haggard takes to describe her death one Hves through the
whole gamut of devolution. It is not death indeed which he
describes but reduction, One is privileged, as it were, to assist

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

at the spectacle of Nature reclaiming from her victim the secret
which had been stolen from her. By observing the process in reverse
the sense of awe which Ues at the very roots of our being is enhanced.
Prepared to witness a miracle, we are made to participate in a
fiasco beyond human comprehension. It is at the Place of Life,
let me remind the reader, that this unique death takes place. Life
and death. Haggard tells us, are very close together. What he
probably meant us to understand is that they are twins, and that
only once is it given us to experience the miracle of life, only once
the miracle of death : what happens in between is like the turning
of a wheel, a perpetual rotation about an inner void, a dream that
never ends, the activity of the wheel having nothing to do with
the movement engendering it.

The deathless beauty of Ayesha, her seeming immortaHty, her
wisdom which is ageless, her powers of sorcery and enchantment,
her dominion over life and death, as Rider Haggard slowly but
deftly reveals this mysterious being to us, might well serve as a
description of the soul of Nature. That which sustains Ayesha,
and at the same time constmies her, is the faith that she will
eventually be reunited with her beloved. And what could the
Beloved be but the holy Spirit ? No less a gift than this could
suffice a soul endowed with her matchless hunger, patience and
fortitude. The love which alone can transform the soul of Nature
is divine love. Time counts for naught when spirit and soul are
divorced. The splendor of neither can be made manifest except
through union. Man, the only creature possessed of a dual nature,
remains a riddle unto himself, keeps revolving on the wheel of
life and death, until he pierces the enigma of identity. The drama
of love, which is the highest he may enact, carries within it the
key to the mystery. One law, one being, one faith, one race of
man. Aye ! " To die means to be cut oflf, not to cease being."
In his inabiUty to surrender to life, man cuts himself off. Ayesha,
seemingly deathless, had thus cut herself off by renouncing the
spirit which was in her. The beloved Kallikrates, her twin soul,
unable to bear the splendor of her soul when he gazes upon it for
the first time, is killed by Ayesha's own will. The punishment for
this incestuous murder is arrestation. Ayesha, invested with beauty,
power, wisdom and youth, is doomed to wait until her Beloved
92

RIDER HAGGARD

assumes flesh once again. The generations of time which pass
in the interval are like the period separating one incarnation from
another. Ayesha's Devachan is the Caves of K6r. There she is as
remote from Hfe as the soul in limbo. In this same dread place
KalHkrates too, or rather the preserved shell of her immortal love,
passes the interval. His image is with her constantly. Possessive
in life, Ayesha is equally possessive in death. Jealousy, manifesting
itself in a tyrannical will, in an insatiable love of power, bums in
her with the brightoess of a funeral pyre. She has all time, seem-
ingly, in which to review her past, to weigh her deeds, her thoughts,
her emotions. An endless time of preparation for the one lesson
she has yet to learn — the lesson of love. Godlike, she is yet more
vulnerable than the merest mortal. Her faith is bom of despair,
not of love, not of understanding. It is a faith which will be tested
in cmelest fashion. The veil which wraps her round, the veil which
no mortal man has penetrated — ^her divine virginity, in short —
will be removed, tom from her, at the crucial moment. Then
she will stand revealed to herself Then, open to love, she will
move forward in spirit as well as soul. Then she will be ready for
the miracle of death, that death which comes but once. With
the coming of this final death she will enter the deathless realm of
being. Isis, to whom she had sworn eternal devotion, will be no
more. Devotion, transformed by love, merges with undentanding,
then death, then divine being. That which always was, always
will be, now is eternally. Nameless, timeless, indefinable, the
nature of one*s tme identity is thus swallowed up in the manner
of the dragon swallowing its tail.

To summarize thus briefly the saHent features of this great
romance, especially perhaps to ofler interpretation of his theme,
is to do an injustice to the author. But there is a duality in Rider
Haggard which intrigues me enormously. An earth-bound indivi-
dual, conventional in his ways, orthodox in his beHefs, though fiill
of curiosity and tolerance, endowed with great vitaHty and practical
wisdom, this man who is reticent and reserved, English to the core,
one might say, reveals through his ** romances " a hidden nature,
a hidden being, a hidden lore which is amazing. His method of
writing these romances — at fiill speed, hardly stopping to think,
so to speak — enabled him to tap his unconscious with freedom and

THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

depth. It is as if, by virtue of this technique, he found the way to
project the living plasm of previous incarnations. In spinning
his tales he permits the narrator to philosophize in a loose way,
thus permitting the reader to obtain glimpses and flashes of his
true thoughts. His story-teller's gift, however, is too great for him
to allow his deepest reflections to assume the cloying form and
dimensions which would break the spell of the recital.

With these brief sidelights on the author for the reader who may
not know She or the sequel called Ayesha, let me proceed to expose
some of the mysterious filaments by which a boy, this particular
boy, myself, was bound and doubtless formed in ways beyond
his knowing. I have said that Helen of Troy was never real to me.
Certainly I read of her before I happened upon She. Everything
relating to the golden legends of Troy and Crete was part of my
childhood legacy. Through the talcs interwoven with the legend
and romance of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table
I had become acquainted with other legendary and deathless
beauties, notably Isolt. The awesome deeds of MerUn and other
hoary wizards were also familiar to me. I had presumably steeped
myself in tales dealing with the rites of the dead, as practiced in
Egypt and elsewhere. I mention all this to indicate that the collision
with Rider Haggard's subject matter was not in the nature of a
fint shock. I had been prepared, if I may put it that way. But
perhaps because of his skill as a narrator, perhaps because he had
struck just the right tone, the right level of understanding for a
boy, the force of these combined factors permitted the arrow to
reach its destined target for the first time. I was pierced through
and through— in the Place of Love, in the Place of Beauty, in the
Place of Life. It was at the Place of Life that I received the mortal
wound. Just as Ayesha had dealt death toiler beloved instead of
life, thereby condemning herself to a prolonged purgatorial existence,
so had I been dealt a " Htde " death, I suspect, on closing this book
some forty-five years ago. Gone, seemingly forever, were my
visions of Love, of Eternal Beauty, of Renunciation and Sacrifice,
of Life Eternal. Like Rimbaud, however, in referring to the visions
of the poet-seer, I may exclaim : " But I saw them ! " Ayesha,
consumed by the devouring flame, at the very source and fount
of life, took with her into limbo all that was sacred and precious
94

HlDEft HAGGAltD

to me. Only once is it given to experience the miracle of life. The import
of this dawns slowly, vciry slowly, upon me. Again and again I
revolt against books, against raw experience, against wisdom itself,
as well as Nature and God knows what all. But I am always brought
back, sometimes at the very edge of the fateful precipice.

" Whoever has not become fully alive in this Ufe will not become
so through death."* I beUeve this to be the hidden note in all
reUgious teachings. ** To die," as Gutkind says, " means to be
cut off, not to cease." Cut off from what ? From everything :
from love, participation, wisdom, experience, but above all, from
the very source of life.

Youth is one kind of aliveness. It is not the only kind, but it
is vitally linked to the world of spirit. To worship youth instead
of hfe itself is as disastrous as to worship power. Only wisdom is
eternally renewable. But of Ufe-wisdom contemporary man knows
Httle. He has not only lost his youth, he has lost his innocence.
He clings to illusions, ideals, beHefs.

In the chapter called "What We Saw," which affects me as
deeply now as it did long ago, the narrator, after watching Ayesha
consumed by the flame of life, reflects thus : ** Ayesha locked up
in her living tomb, waiting from age to age for the coming of her
lover, worked but a small change in the order of the world. But
Ayesha, strong and happy in her love, clothed with immortal
youth, godlike beauty and power, and the wisdom of the centuries,
would have revolutionized society, and even perchance have changed
the destinies of Mankind." And then he adds this sentence, upon
which I have pondered long : " Thus she opposed herself to the
eternal law, and, strong though she was, by it was swept back into
nothingness . . ."

One immediately thinks of the great figures in myth, legend
and history who attempted to revolutionize society and thereby
alter the destiny of man : Lucifer, Prometheus, Akhnaton, Ashoka,
Jesus, Mahomet, Napoleon . . . One thinks especially of Lucifer,
the Prince of Darkness, the most shining revolutionary of all.
Each one paid for his " crime." Yet all arc revered. The rebel,
I firmly believe, is closer to God than the saint. To him is given
dominion over the dark forces which we must obey before we

* The Absolute Collective, by Erich Gutkiiid.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIfE

can receive the light of illumination. The return to the source,
the only revolution which has meaning for man, is the whole goal
of man. It is a revolution which can occur only in his being. This
is the true significance of the plunge into life's stream, of becoming
Rilly alive, awakening, recovering one's complete identity.

Identity ! This is the word which, on rereading Rider Haggard,
has come to haunt me. It is the riddle of identity which caused
such books as Louis Lambert^ Seraphita, Interlinear to Caheza de Vaca,
Siddhartha^ to exercise dominion over me. I began my writing
career with the intention of telling the truth about myself "What
a fatuous task ! What can possibly be more fictive than the story
of one's life ? " We learn nothing by reading [Winckelman],"
said Goethe, " we become something." Similarly I might say — ^we
reveal nothing of ourselves by telling the truth, but we do some-
times discover ourselves. I who had thought to give something
found that I had received something.

Why the emphasis, in my works, on crude, repetitious experience
of life ? Is it not dust in the eye ? Am I revealing myself or finding
myself ? In the world of sex I seem alternately to lose and to find
myself. It is all seeming. The conflict, which if not hidden is
certainly smothered, is the conflict between Spirit and Reality.
{Spirit and Reality y incidentally, is the title of a book by a blood brother
whom I have discovered only recendy.) For a long time reality for me
was Woman. Which is equivalent to saying— Nature, Myth, Country,
Mother, Chaos. I expatiate — to the reader's amazement, no doubt— on
a romance called She, forgetting that I dedicated the cornerstone of my
autobiography to " Her." How very much there was of " She " in
" Her " ! In place of die great Caves of K6r I described the bottomless
black pit. Like " She," " Her " also strove desperately to give me hfc,
beauty, power and dominion over others, even if only through the
magic of words. " Her's " too was an endless immolation, a wait-
ing (in how awfiil a sense !) for the Beloved to return. And if
" Her " dealt me death in the Place of Life, was it not also in blind
passion, out of fear and jealousy ? What was the secret of Her
terrible beauty. Her fearfiil power over others. Her contempt for
Her slavish minions, if not the desire to expiate Her crime i The
aime ? That she had robbed me of my identity at the very moment
when I was about to recover it. In Her I lived as truly as the image
96

RIDER HAGGARD

of the slaiii Kallikrates lived in the mind, heart and soul of Ayesha.
In some strange, twisted way, having dedicated myself to the task
of immortalizing Her, I convinced myself that I was giving Her
Life in return for Death. I thought I could resurrect the past,
thought I could make it live again — in truth. Vanity, vanity ! All
I accomplished was to reopen the wound that had been inflicted
upon me. The wound still lives, and with the pain of it comes
the remembrance of what I was. I see very clearly that I was not
this, not that. The " notness ** is clearer than the " isness." I see
the meaning of the long Odyssey I made ; I recognize all the Circes
who held me in their thrall. I found my father, both the one in
the flesh and the unnameable one. And I discovered that father
and son are one. More, immeasurably more : I found at last that
all is one.

At Mycenae, standing before the grave of Clytemnestra, I reUved
the ancient Greek tragedies which nourished me more than did
the great Shakespeare. CUmbing down the sUppery stairs to the
pit, which I described in the book on Greece, I experienced the
same sensation of horror which I did as a boy when descending
into the bowels of Kor. It seems to me that I have stood before
many a bottomless pit, have looked into many a chamel house.
But what is more vivid still, more awe-inspiring, is the remembrance
that, whenever in my life I have gazed too long upon Beauty,
particularly the beauty of the female, I have always experienced
the sensation of fear. Fear, and a touch of horror too. What is
the origin of this horror ? The dim remembrance of being other
than I now am, of being fit (once) to receive the blessings of beaury%
the gift of love, the truth of God. Why, do we not sometimes
ask ourselves, why the fatidical beauty in the great heroines of love
throughout the ages ; Why do they seem so logically and naturally
surrounded by death, bolstered by crime, nourished by evil i
There is a sentence in She which is strikingly penetrative. It comes
at the moment when Ayesha, having found her Beloved, realizes
that physical union must be postponed" yet a while. ** As yet I
may not mate with thee, for thou and I are different, and the very
brighmess of my being would bum thee up, and perchance destroy
thee." (I would give anything to know what I made of these words
when I read them as a boy !)

THE BOOKS IN MT LIFB

No matter how much I dwell on the works of others I come
back inevitably to the one and only book, the book of myself

** Can I be/' says Miguel de Unamuno, " as I believe myself or
as others believe me to be ? Here is where these lines become a
confession in the presence of my unknown and unknowable mc»
unknown and unknowable for myself Here is where I create the
legend wherein I must bury myself."

These lines appear in the fly-leaf to Black Spring, a book which
came nearer to being myself, I believer~feii any~^ook I have
>y written before or since. Ilie book which I had promised mysdf
to create as a monument to Her, the book in which I was to deliver
the ** secret," I did not have the courage to begin until about eight
years ago. And then, having begun it, I put it aside for another
five years. Tropic of Capricorn was intended to be the cornerstone
of this monumental work. It is more like a vestibule or ante-
chamber. The truth is that I wrote this dread book* in my head
when jotting down (in the space of about eighteen continuous hours)
the complete outline or notes covering the subject matter of this
work. I made this cryptic skeleton of the magnum opus during
a period of brief separation — fi-om " Her." I was completely pos-
sessed and utterly desolate. It is now almost twenty-three years
to the dot that I laid out the plan of the book. I had no thought
whatever then of writing anything but this one grand book. It
was to be the Book of My Life — my life with Her. Of what stupen-
dous, unimaginable detours are our Uves composed ! All is voyage,
all is quest. We are not even aware of the goal until we have
reached it and become one with it. To employ the word reality
is to say myth and legend. To speak of creation means to bury
oneself in chaos. We know not whence we come nor whither we
go, nor even who we are. We set sail for the golden shores, sped
on sometimes Hke ** arrows of longing," and we arrive at our
destination in the full glory of realization — or else as unrecognizable
pulp from which the essence of life has been squashed. But let us
not be deceived by that word ** failure " which attaches itself to
certain illustrious names and which is nothing more than the written
seal and symbol of martyrdom. When the good Dr. Gachet wrote
to brother Theo that the expression " love of art " did not apply

* Tlie Rosy Crucifixion. ^

RIOBR HAGGARD

in Vincent's case, that his was rather a case of " martyrdom "
to his art, we realize with full hearts that Van Gogh was one of
the most glorious ** failures " in the history of art. Similarly, when
Professor Dandieu states that Proust was ** the most living of the
dead," we understand immediately that this " living corpse " had
walled himself in to expose the absurdity and the emptiness of
our feverish activity. Montaigne from his ** retreat " throws a
beam of light down the centuries. The Failure, by Papini, incited
me enormously and helped to erase from my mind all thought
of failure. If Life and Death are very near together, so are success
and failure.

It is our great fortune sometimes to misinterpret our destiny
when it is revealed to us. We often accompHsh our ends despite
ourselves. We try to avoid the swamps and jungles, we seek fran-
tically to escape the wilderness or the desert (one and the same),
we attach ourselves to leaders, we worship the gods instead of the
One and Only, we lose ourselves in the labyrinth, we fly to distant
shores and speak with other tongues, adopt other customs, manners,
conventions, but ever and always are we driven towards our true
end, concealed from us till the last moment.

JEAN GIONO

It was in the rue d'Al^ia, in one of those humble stationery stores
which sell books, that I first came across Jean Giono's worb. It
was the daughter of the proprietor — ^blcss her soul ! — who literally
thrust upon nic the book called Que majoie demeure ! (The Joy of
Mans Desiring). In 1939, after making a pilgrimage to Manosquc
with Giono's boyhood friend, Henri Fluch^re, the latter bought
for me Jean le Bleu {Blue Boy), which I read on the boat going to
Greece. Both these French editions I lost in my wanderings. On
returning to America, however, I soon made the acquaintance of
Pascal Covici, one of the editors of the Viking Press, and through
him I got acquainted with all that has been translated of Giono —
not very much, I sadly confess.

Between times I have maintained a random correspondence
with Giono, who continues to live in the place of his birth,
Manosque. How often I have regretted that I did not meet him
on the occasion of my visit to his home — he was off then on a
walking expedition through the countryside he describes with such
deep poetic imagination in his books. But if I never meet him in
the flesh I can certainly say that I have met him in the spirit. And
so have many others throughout this wide world. Some, I find,
know him only through the screen versions of his books — Harvest
and The Baker's Wife. No one ever leaves the theatre, after a per-
formance of these films, with a dry eye. No one ever looks upon
a loaf of bread, after seeing Harvest, in quite the same way as he
used to ; nor, after seeing The Baker's Wife, does one think of the
cuckold with the same raucous levity.

But these are trifling observations . . .

A few moments ago, tenderly flipping the pages of his books, I
was saying to myself : " Tenderize your finger tips ! Make yourself
ready for the great task ! "

For several years now I have been preaching the gospel — of
100

JBAN GIONO

Jean Giono. I do not say that my words have fallen upon deaf
ears, I merely complain that my audience has been restricted. I
do not doubt that I have made myself a nuisance at the Viking
Press in New York, for I keep pestering them intermittently to
speed up the translations of Giono's works. Fortunately I am able
to read Giono in his own tongue and, at the risk of sounding
immodest, in his own idiom. But, as ever, I continue to think of
the countless thousands in England and America who must wait
until his books are translated. I feel that I could convert to the
ranks of his ever-growing admirers innumerable readers whom
his American publishers despair of reaching. I think I could even
sway the hearts of those who have never heard of him — ^in England,
Austraha, New Zealand and other places where the English language
is spoken. But I seem incapable of moving those few pivotal beings
who hold, in a manner of speaking, his destiny in their hands.
Neither with logic nor passion, neither with statistics nor examples,
can I budge the position of editors and pubHshers in this, my native
land. I shall probably succeed in getting Giono translated into
Arabic, Turkish and Chinese before I convince his American
publishers to go forward with the task they so sincerely began.

Flipping the pages of The Joy of Mans Desiring — I was looking
for the reference to Orion "looking like Queen Anne's lace** —
I noticed these words of Bobi, the chief figure in the book :

I have never been able to show people things. It's
curious. I have always been reproached for It. They say :
* No one sees what you mean.'

Nothing could better express the way I feel at times. Hesitatingly
I add — Giono, too, must often experience this sense of frustration.
Otherwise I am unable to account for the fact that, despite the
incontrovertible logic of dollars and cents with which his publishers
always silence me, his works have not spread Uke wildfire on this
continent.

I am never convinced by the sort of logic referred to. I may be
silenced, but I am not convinced. On the other hand, I must confess
that I do not know the formula for " success," as publishers use
the term. I doubt if they do either. Nor do I think a man like
Giono would thank me for making him a commercial success.

lOI

TM 1 BOOKS IN MY LIFB

He would like to be retd more, certainly. What author does not i
Like every author, he would especially like to be read by those
who see what he means.

Herbert Read paid him a high tribute in a paper written during

the War. He referred to him as the " peasant-anarchist." (I am

sure his publishers are not keen to advertise such a label !) I do

not think of Giono, myself, either as peasant or anarchist, though

I regard neither term as pejorative. (Neither does Herbert Read,

to be sure.) If Giono is an anarchist, then so were Emerson and

Thoreau. If Giono is a peasant, then so was Tolstoy. But we do

not begin to touch the essence of these great figiures in regarding

them from these aspects, these angles. Giono ennobles the peasant

in his narratives ; Giono enlarges the concept of anarchism in his

philosophic adumbrations. When he touches a man like our own

Herman Melville, in the book called Pour Saluer Melville (which

the Viking Press refuses to bring out, though it was translated for

them), we come very close to the real Giono — and, what is even

more important, close to the real Melville. This Giono is a poet.

His poetry is of the imagination and reveals itself just as forcibly

in his prose. It is through this ftinction that Giono reveals his

power to captivate men and women everywhere, regardless of

rank, class, status or pursuit. This is the legacy left him by his

parents, particularly, I feel, by his father, of whom he has written

so tenderly, so movingly, in Blue Boy. In his Corsican blood there

is a strain which, like the wines of Greece when added to French

vintages, lend body and tang to the GalUc tongue. As for the soil

in which he is rooted, and for which his true patriotism never fails

to manifest itself, only a wizard, it seems to me, could relate cause

to effect. Like our own Faulkner, Giono has created his own private

terrestrial domain, a mythical domain far closer to reaUty than

books of history or geography. It is a region over which the stars

and planets course with throbbing pulsations. It is a land in which

things ** happen ** to men as aeons ago they happened to the gods.

Pan still walks the earth. The soil is saturated with cosmic juices.

Events " transpire." Miracles occur. And never does the author

betray the figures, the characters, whom he has conjured out of

the womb of his rich imagination. His men and women have their

prototypes in the legends of provincial France, in the songs of the

;o2

JBAN «lONO

troubadors, in the daily doings of humble, unknown peasants,
an endless line of them, firom Charlemagne's day to the very present.
In Giono's works we have the sombreness of Hardy's moors, the
eloquence of Lawrence's flowers and lowly creatures, the enchant-
ment and sorcery of Arthur Machen's Welsh settings, the freedom
and violence of Faulkner's world, the buffoonery and Hcence of the
medieval mystery plays. And with all this a pagan charm and
sensuality which stems from the ancient Greek world.

If we look back on the ten years preceding the outbreak
of the war, the years of steep incline into disaster, then
the significant figures in the French scene are not the
Gides and the Val^rys, or any competitor for the laurels
of the Acad^mie, but Giono, the peasant-anarchist,
Bemanos, the integral Christian, and Br6ton, the
super-realist. These are the significant figures, and they
are positive figures, creative because destructive, moral
in their revolt against contemporary values. Apparendy
they are disparate figures, working in different spheres,
along different levels of human consciousness ; but in
the total sphere of that consciousness their orbits meet,
and include within their points of contact nothing that
is compromising, reactionary or decadent ; but contain
everything that is positive, revolutionary, and creative
of a new and enduring world.*

Giono's revolt against contemporary values runs through all
his books. In Refusal to Obey, which appeared in translation only
in James Cooney's Uttle magazine. The Phoenix, so far as I know,
Giono spoke out manfully against war, against conscription, against
bearing arms. Such diatribes do not help to make an author more
popular in his native land. When the next war comes such a man
is marked : whatever he says or docs is reported in the papers,
exaggerated, distorted, falsified. The men who have their country's
interest most at heart are the very ones to be vilified, to be called
" traitors," " renegades " or worse. Here is an impassioned utterance
made by Giono in Blue Boy. It may throw a little light on the nature
of his revolt. It begins :

* Politics of the Unpolitical, by Herbert Read, Routledge, London, 19^6.

103

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

I don't remember how my friendship for Louis David
began. At this moment, as I speak of him, I can no longer
recall my pure youth, the enchantment of the magicians
and of the days. I am steeped in blood. Beyond this book
there is a deep wound from which all men of my age are
suffering. This side of the page is soiled with pus and
darkness . . .

If you (Louis) had only died for honorable things ; if
you had fought for love or in getting food for your litde
ones. But, no. First they deceived you and then they
killed you in the war.

What do you want me to do with this France that
you have helped, it seems, to preserve, as I too have done l
What shall we do with it, we who have lost all our friends ?
Ah ! If it were a question of defending rivers, hills, moun-
tains, skies, winds, rains, I would say, * Willingly. That
is our job. Let us fight. All our happiness in life is there.*
No, we have defended the sham name of all that. When
I see a river, I say * river * ; when I see a tree, I say * tree ' ;
I never say * France.' That does not exist.

Ah ! How willingly would I give away that false name
that one single one of those dead, the simplest, the most
humble, might Hve again ! Nothing can be put into
the scales with the human heart. They are all the time
talking about God ! It is God who gave the tiny shove
with His finger to the pendulum of the clock of blood at
the instant me child dropped from its mother's womb.
They are always talking about God, when the only product
of His good workmanship, the only thing that is godhke,
the hfe that He alone can create, in spite of all your science
of bespectacled idiots, that life you destroy at will in an
infamous mortar of slime and spit, with the blessing of
all your churches. What logic !

There is no glory in being French. There is only one
glory : in being alive.

When I read a passage hke this I am inclined to make extravagant
statements. Somewhere I beHeve I said that if I had to choose
\ between France and Giono I would choose Giono. I have the same
feeling about Whitman. For me Walt Whitman is a hundred, a
thousand, times more America than America itself It was the
great Democrat himself who wrote thus about our vaunted
democracy :

104

JEAN GIONO

We have frequently printed the word Democracy. Yet
I cannot too often repeat that it is a word the real gist of
which still sleeps, quite unawakened, notwithstanding
the resonance and the many angry tempests out of which
its syllables have come, from pen and tongue. It is a great
word, whose history, I suppose, remains unwritten, because
that history has yet to be enacted.*

No, a man Hke Giono could never be a traitor, not even if he
folded his hands and allowed the enemy to overrun his country. In
Maurizius Forever^ wherein I devoted some pages to his Refusal to
Obey, I put it thus, and I repeat it with even greater vehemence :
"I say there is something wrong with a society which, because it
quarrels with a man's views, can condemn liim as an arch-enemy.
Giono is not a traitor. Society is the traitor. Society is a traitor to
its fine principles, its empty principles. Society is constantly looking
for victims — and finds them among the glorious in spirit."

What was it Goethe said to Eckermann ? Interesting indeed that
the " first European " should have expressed himself thus : " Men
will become more clever and more acute ; but not better, happier,
and stronger in action — or at least only at epochs. I foresee the time
when God will break up everything for a renewed creation. I am
certain that everything is planned to this end, and that the time and
hour in the distant fiiture for occurrence of this renovating epoch are
aheady fixed ..."

The other day someone mentioned in my presence how curious
and repetitive was the role of the father in authors* hves. We had
been speaking of Joyce, of Utrillo, of Thomas Wolfe, of Lawrence,
of C^Hne, of Van Gogh, of Cendrars, and then of Egyptian myths
and of the legends of Crete. We spoke of those who had never
found their father, of those who were forever seeking a father. We
spoke of Joseph and his brethren, of Jonathan and David, of the
magic connected with names such as the Hellespont and Fort
Ticonderoga. As they spoke I was frantically searching my memory
for instances where the mother played a great role. I could think
only of two, but they were truly illustrious names — Goethe and da
Vinci. Then I began to speak o£ Blue Boy. I looked for that extra-
ordinary passage, so meaningful to a writer, wherein Giono tells
what his father meant to him.

* From Democratic Vistas.

105

TBS BOOKS IN MY LIPI

If I have such love for the memory of my father, it
begins, if I can never separate myself from his inuge,
if time cannot cut the thread, it is because in the experience
of every single day I realize all that he has done for me. He
was the first to recognize my sensuousncss. He was the
first to see, with his gray eyes, that sensuousness that made
me touch a wall and imagine the roughness like porous
skin. That sensuousness that prevented me firom learning
music, putting a higher price on the intoxication of listening
than on the joy of being skillfiil, that sensuousness that
made me like a drop of water pierced by the sun, pierced
by the shapes and colors in the world, bearing in truth,
like a drop of water, the form, the color, the sound, the
sensation, physically in my flesh . . .

He broke nothing, tore nothing in me, stifled nothing,
effaced nothing with his moistened finger. With the
prescience of an insect he gave the remedies to the Htde larva
diat I was : one day this, the next day that ; he weighted
me with plants, trees, earth, men» hills, women, grief,
goodness, pride, all these as remedies, all these as provision,
in prevision of what might be a running sore, but which,
thanks to him, became an immense sun within me.

Towards the close of the book, the fiither nearing his end, they
have a quiet talk under a linden tree. " Where I made a mistake,"
says his father, ** was when I wanted to be good and helpfiil. You
will make a mistake, like me."

Heart-rending words. Too true, too true. I wept when I read this.
I weep again in recalling his Other's words. I weep for Giono, for
myself, for all who have striven to be " good and helpfiil." For those
who are still striving, even though they know in their hearts that
it is a *' mistake." What we know is nothing compared to what we
feel impelled to do out of the goodness of our hearts. Wisdom can
never be transmitted from one to another. And in the ultimate do
we not abandon wisdom for love e

There is another passage in which father and son converse with
Franchesc Odripano. They had been talking about die art of healing.
* When a person has a pure breath,* my father said, * he
can put out wounds all about him like so many lamps.'

But I was not so sure. I said, * If you put out all the
lamps. Papa, you won t be able to sec anv more.'

At that moment the velvet eyes were still and diey were
looking beyond my glorious youth.
io6

JIAN ©lONO

* That is true,* he replied, * the wounds illumine. That
is true. You listen to Odripono a good deal. He has had
experience. If he can stay young amongst us it is because
he is a poet. Do you know what poetry is ? Do you
know that what he says is poetry ? Do you know mat,
son ? It is essential to real^ that. Now listen. I, too,
have had my experiences, and I teU you that you must put
out the wounds. If, when you get to be a man, you know
these two things, poetry and the science of extinguishing
wounds, then you will be a man.*

I beg the reader's indulgence for quoting at sudi length from
Giono*s worb. If I thought for one moment that most everyone
was familiar with Giono*s writings I would indeed be embarrassed
to have made these citations. A friend of mine said the other day
that practically everyone he had met knew Jean Giono. ** You mean
his books ? " I asked. ** At least some of them,** he said. " At any
rate, they certainly know what he stands for.** "That*s another
story," I repUed. " You're lucky to move in such circles. I have quite
another story to tell about Giono. I doubt sometimes that even his
editors have read him. How to ready that*s the question."

That evening, glancing through a book by Holbrook Jackson,*
I stumbled on Coleridge*s four classes of readers. Let me cite them :

1. Sponges, who absorb all they read, and return it nearly in
the same state, only a Httle dirtied.

2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing, and are content to get
through a book for the sake of getting through the time.

3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.

4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by
what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

Most of us belong in the third category, if not also in one of the
first two. Rare indeed are the mogul diamonds ! And now I wish
to make an observation connected with the lending of Giono*s books.
The few I possess — among them The Song of the World and Lovers are
never Losers, which I sec I have not mentioned — have been loaned
over and over again to all who expressed a desire to become acquain-
ted with Jean Giono. This means that I have not only handed them
to a considerable number of visitors but that I have wrapped and
mailed the books to numerous others, to some in foreign lands as

*The Reading of Books, Scrihnpr's, New yorlc,^i947.

107

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFB

well. To no author I have recommended has there been a response
such as hailed the reading of Giono. The reactions have been virtually
unanimous. " Magnificent ! Thank you, thank you ! " that is the
usual return. Only one person disapproved, said flatly that he could
make nothing of Giono, and that was a man dying of cancer. I had
lent him The Joy of Mans Desiring. He was one of those "success-
ful " business men who had achieved everything and found nothing
to sustain him. I think we may regard his verdict as exceptional.
The others, and they include men and women of all ages, all walks
of Ufe, men and women of the most diverse views, the most con-
flicting aims and tendencies, all proclaimed their love, admiration
and gratitude for Jean Giono. They do not represent a ** select "
audience, they were chosen at random. The one qualification which
they had in common was a thirst for good books . . .

These are my private statistics, which I maintain are as vaHd as
the pubhsher's. It is the hungry and thirsty who wiU eventually
decide the future of Giono's works.

There is another man, a tragic figure, whose book I often thrust
upon friends and acquaintances : Vaslav Nijinsky. His Diary is in
some strange way connected with Blue Boy. It tells me something
about writing. It is the writing of a man who is part lucid, part mad.
It is a communication so naked, so desperate, that it breaks the mold.
We are face to face with reality, and it is almost unbearable. The
technique, so utterly personal, is one from which every writer can
learn. Had he not gone to the asylum, had this been merely his
baptismal work, we would have had in Nijinsky a writer equal to
the dancer.

I mention this book because I have scanned it closely. Though
it may sound presumptuous to say so, it is a book for writers. I can-
not limit Giono in this way, but I must say that he, too, feeds the
writer, instructs the writer, inspires the writer. In Blue Boy he gives
us the genesis of a writer, telling it with the consummate art of a
practiced writer. One feels that he is a " bom writer." One feels
that he might also be a painter, a musician (despite what he says). It
is the " Storyteller's Story," I'histoire de I'histoire. It peels away the
wrappings in which we mummify writers and reveals the embryonic
being. It gives us the physiology, the chemistry, the physics, the
biology of that curious animal, the writer. It is a textbook dipped
io8

JEAN GIONO

in the magic fluid of the medium it expouncts. It connects us with the
source of all creative activity. It breathes, it palpitates, it renews the
blood stream. It is the kind of book which every man who thinks
he has at least one story to tell could write but which he never does,
alas. It is the story which authors are telling over and over again in
myriad disguises. Seldom does it come straight from the deHvery
room. Usually it is washed and dressed first. Usually it is given
a name which is not the true name.

His sensuousness, the development of which Giono attributes to his
father's dehcate nurturing, is without question one of the cardinal
features of his art. It invests his characters, his landscapes, his whole
narrative. " Let us refine our finger tips, our points of contact with
the world ..." Giono has done just this. The result is that we
detect in his music the use of an instrument which has undergone the
same ripening process as the player. In Giono the music and the
instrument are one. That is his special gift. If he did not become a
musician because, as he says, he thought it more important to be a
good listener, he has become a writer who has raised Hstening to
such an art that we follow his melodies as if we had written them
ourselves. We no longer know, in reading his books, whether we
are Hstening to Giono or to ourselves. We are not even aware that
we are Hstening. We Hve through his words and in them, as naturally
as if we were respiring at a comfortable altitude or floating on the
bosom of the deep or swooping like a hawk with the down-draught of
a canyon. The actions of his narratives are cushioned in this terres-
trial effluvium ; the machinery never grinds because it is perpetually
laved by cosmic lubricants. Giono gives us men, beasts and gods —
in their molecular constituency.* He has seen no need to descend
to the atomic arena. He deals in galaxies and constellations, in
troupes, herds, and flocks, in biological plasm as weU as primal
magma and plasma. The names of his characters, as well as the hills
and streams which surround them, have the tang, the aroma, the
vigor and the spice of string herbs. They are autochthonous names,
redolent of the Midi. When we pronounce them we revive the
memory of other times ; unknowingly we inhale a whifl" of the
African shore. We suspect that Atlantis was not so distant either in
time or space.

* Et bien niietix qtC Osseudowski !

109

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

It is a little over twenty years now since Giono's Colline, published
in translation as Hill of Destiny, by Brcntano's, New York, made die
author known at once throughout the reading world. In his intro-
duction to the American edition, Jacques le Clercq, the translator,
explains the purpose of the Prix BrentanOj which was first awarded
to Jean Giono.

For the French public, the Prix Brentano owes its impor-
tance to various novel features. To begin with, it is the
first American Foundation to crown a French work and
to insure the pubHcation of that work in America. The
mere fact that it comes firom abroad — Vitranger, cette
postiriti contemporaine " — arouses a lively interest ;
again, the fact that the jury was composed of foreigners
gave ample assurance that there could, be no propaganie
ae chapetle here, no manoeuvres of cliques such as must
necessarily attend French prize-awards. Finally the material
value of the prize itself proved of good augur.

Twenty years since ! And just a few months ago I received two
new books firom Giono — Un Roi Sans Divertissement and No^ — the
first two of a series of twenty. A series of " Chroniques" he calls
them. He was thirty years old when Colline won the Prix Brentano.
In the interval he has written a respectable number of books. And
now, in his fifties, he has projected a series of twenty, of which
several have already been written. Just before the war started he had
begun his celebrated translation of Moby Dicky a labor of several
years, in which he was aided by two capable women whose names
are given along with his as translators of the book. An immense
undertaking, since Giono is not fluent in English. But, as he explains
in the book which followed — Pour Saluer Melville — Mohy Dick was
his constant companion for years during his walks over the hiUs. He
had lived with the book and it had become a part of him. It was
inevitable that he should be the one to make it known to the Frcndi
public. I have read parts of this translation and it seems to me an
inspired one. Melville is not one of my favorites. Mohy Dick has
always been a sort of bete noir for me. But in reading the French
version, which I prefer to the original, I have come to the conclusion
that I will some day read the book. After reading Pour Saluer
Melville, which is a poet's interpretation of a poet — " a pure in ven-
ue

JBAN GIONO

tion," as Giono himself says in a letter — I was literally beside myself.
How often it is the " foreigner ** who teaches us to appreciate our
own authors ! (I think immediately of that wonderful study of
Walt Whitman by a Frenchman who virtually dedicated his Hfe to
the subject. I think, too, of what Baudelaire did to make Poe's name
a by-word throughout all Europe.) Over and over ^ain we see
that the understanding of a language is not the same, as the imder-
standing of language. It is always communion versus communica-
tion. Even in translation some of us understand Dostoievsky, for
example, better than his Russian contemporaries — or, shall I say, JJ)^

better than our present Russian contemporaries.

I noticed, in reading the Introduction to Hill of Destiny, that the
translator expressed apprehension that the book might offend
certain " squeamish " American readers. It is curious how askance
French authors are regarded by Anglo-Saxons. Even some of the
good CathoHc writers of France are looked upon as " immoral."
It always reminds me of my father's anger when he caught me reading
The Wild Ass' Skin. All he needed was to see the name Balzac.
That was enough to convince him that the book was " immoral."
(Fortunately he never caught me reading Droll Stories I) My father,
of course, had never read a line of Balzac. He had hardly read a line
of any English or American author, indeed. The one writer he
confessed to reading — c'est inoui, mais c'est vrai ! — was John Ruskin.
Ruskin I I nearly fell off the chair when he blurted this out. I did
not know how to account for such an absurdity, but later I dis-
covered that it was the minister who had (temporarily) converted
him to Christ who was responsible. What astounded me even more
was his admission that he had enjoyed reading Ruskin. That still
remains inexplicable to me. But of Ruskin another time . . .

In Giono*s books, as in Cendrars* and so many, many French books,
there are always wonderful accounts of eating and drinking. Some-
times it is a feast, as in The Joy of Mans Desiring, sometimes it is a
simple repast. Whatever it be, it makes one's mouth water. (There
still remains to be written, by an American for Americans, a cook-
book based on the recipes gleaned from the pages of French
literature.) Every dn^aste has observed the prominence given by
French fdm directors to eating and drinking. It is a feature
conspicuously absent in American movies. When we have such a

111

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

scene it is seldom real, neither the food nor the participants. In France,
whenever two or more come together there is sensual as well as
spiritual communion. With what longing American youths look at
these scenes. Often it is a repast al fresco. Then are we even more
moved, for truly we know Httle of the joy of eating and drinking
outdoors. The Frenchman ** loves " his food. We take food for
nourishment or because we are unable to dispense with the liabit.
The Frenchman, even if he is a man of the cities, is closer to the soil
than the American. He does not tamper with or refine away the
products of the soil. He relishes the homely meals as much as the
creations of the gourmet. He Hkes things fresh, not canned or
refrigerated. And almost every Frenchman knows how to cook. I
have never met a Frenchman who did not know how to make such
a simple thing as an omelette, for example. But I know plenty of
Americans who cannot even boil an egg.

Naturally, with good food goes good conversation, another
element completely lacking in our country. To have good conversa-
tion it is almost imperative to have good wine with the meal. Not
cocktails, not whisky, not cold beer or ale. Ah, the wines ! The
variety of them, the subtle, indescribable effects they produce !
And let me not forget that with good food goes beautifiil women —
women who, in addition to stimulating one's appetite, know how to
inspire good conversation. How horrible are our banquets for men
only ! How we love to castrate, to mutilate ourselves ! How we
really loathe all that is sensuous and sensual ! I beUeve most earnestly
that what repels Americans more than immoraHty is the pleasure
to be derived from the enjoyment of the five senses. We are not a
" moral " people by any means. We do not need to read La Peau
by Malaparte to discover what beasts are hidden beneath our chival-
ric uniforms. And when I say " uniforms " I mean the garb which
disguises the civihan as well as that which disguises the soldier. We
are men in uniform through and through. We are not individuals,
neither are we members of a great collectivity. We are neither
democrats, communists, socialists nor anarchists. We are an unruly
mob. And the sign by which we are known is vulgarity.

There is never vulgarity in even the coarsest pages of Giono.
There may be lust, camaUty, sensuality — but not vulgarity. His
characters may indulge in sexual intercourse occasionally, they may

JBAN GIONO

even be said to " fornicate/* but in these indulgences there is never
anything horripilating as in Malaparte's descriptions of American
soldiers abroad. Never is a French writer obhged to resort to the
mannerisms of Lawrence in a book such as Lady Chatterleys Lover.
Lawrence should have known Giono, with whom he has much in
common, by the way. He should have travelled up from Vencc
to the plateau of Haute-Provence where describing the setting
o(ColUne, Giono says : " an endless waste of blue earth, village after
village lying in death on the lavender tableland, A handful of men,
how pitifiiUy few, how ineffectual ! And, crouching amid the grasses,
wallowing in the reeds— the hill, like a bull." But Lawrence was
then already in the grip of death, able nevertheless to give us The
Man Who Died or The Escaped Cock. Still enough breath in him, as
it were, to reject the sickly Christian image of a suffering Redeemer
and restore the image of man in flesh and blood, a man content
just to Hve, just to breathe. A pity he could not have met Giono
in the early days of his life. Even the boy Giono would have been
able to divert him from some of his errors. Lawrence was forever
railing gainst the French, though he enjoyed Hving in France,
it would seem. He saw only what was sick, what was ** decadent,**
in the French. Wherever he went he saw that first — ^his nose was
too keen. Giono so rooted in his native soil, Lawrence so filled with
wanderlust. Both proclaiming the Hfe abundant : Giono in hymns
of Hfe, Lawrence in hymns of hate. Just as Giono has anchored
himself in his ** region,*' so has he anchored himself in the tradition
of art. He has not suffered because of these restrictions, self-imposed.
On the contrary, he has flowered. Lawrence jutted out of his world
and out of the realm of art. He wandered over the earth Uke a lost
soul, finding peace nowhere. He exploited the novel to preach the
resurrection of man, but himself perished miserably. I owe a great
debt to D. H. Lawrence. These observations and comparisons are
not intended as a rejection of the man, they are offered merely as
indications of his limitations. Just because I am also an Anglo-
Saxon, I feel free to stress his faults. We have all ^ us a terrible need
of France. I have said it over and over again. I shall probably do so
luidl I die.
Vive la France ! Vive Jean Giono !

THE BOOKS IN MY L I f B

It was jmt five months ago that I put aside these pages on Jean
Giono, knowing that I had more to say but determined to hold
off until the right moment came. Yesterday I had an unexpected
visit from a literary agent whom I knew years ago in Paris. He is
the sort of individual who on entering a house goes through your
hbrary first, fingering your books and manuscripts, before looking
at you. And when he does look at you he sees not you but only what
is exploitable in you. After remarking, rather asininely, I thought,
that his one aim was to be of help to writers, I took the cue and
mentioned Giono's name.

" There's a man you could do something for, if what you say is
true," I said flady. I showed him Pour Saluer Melville. I explained
that Viking seemed to have no desire to publish any more of Giono's
books.

" And do you know why ? " he demanded.

I told him what they had written me.

" That's not the real reason," he replied, and proceeded to give
me what he " knew " to be the real reason.

" And even if what you say is true," said I, " though I don't
beheve it, there remains this book which I want to see published.
It is a beautifiil book. I love it."

" In fact," I added, ** my love and admiration for Giono is such
that it doesn't matter a damn to me what he does or what he is said
to have done. I know my Giono."

He looked at me quizzically and, as if to provoke me, asserted :
" There are several Gionos, you know."

I knew what he was implying but I answered simply : "I love
them all."

That seemed to stop him in his tracks. I was certain, moreover,
that he was not as familiar with Giono as he pretended to be. What
he wanted to tell me, undoubtedly, was that the Giono of a certain
period was much better than the Giono of another. The " better "
Giono would, of course, have been his Giono. This is the sort of
small talk which keeps Hterary circles in a perpetual ferment.

When Colline appeared it was as if the whole world recognized
this man Giono. This happened again when Que majoie demeure came
out. It probably happened a nimibcr of times. At any rate, whenever
this happens, whenever a book wins immediate universal acclaim,
114

JBAN GIONO

it is somehow taken for granted that the book is a true reflection of
the author. It is as though until that moment the man did not exist.
Or perhaps it is admitted that the man existed but the writer did
not. Yet the writer exists even before the man, paradoxically. The
man would never have become what he did unless there was in him
the creative germ. He Hves the life which he will record in words.
He dreams his Hfe before he Hves it ; he dreams it in order to live it.

In their first " successfiil " work some authors give such a full
image of themselves that no matter what they say later this image
endures, dominates, and often obHterates all succeeding ones. The
same thing happens sometimes in our first encounter vdth another
individual. So strongly does the personality of the other register
itself in such moments that ever afterwards, no matter how much
the person alters, or reveals his other aspects, this first image is the
one which endures. Sometimes it is a blessing that one is able to
retain this original full image ; other times it is a rank injustice
inflicted upon the one we love.

That Giono is a man of many facets I would not think of denying.
That, like all of us, he has his good side and his bad side, I would
not deny either. In Giono's case it happens that with every book he
produces he reveals himself fully. The revelation is given in every
sentence. He is always himself and he is always giving of himself
This is one of the rare qualities he possesses, one which distinguishes
him from a host of lesser writers. Moreover, Hke Picasso, I can well
imagine him saying : " Is it necessary that everything I do prove a
masterpiece ? " Of him, as of Picasso, I would say that the " master-
piece " was the creative act itself and not a particular work which
happened to please a large audience and be accepted as the very
body of Christ.

Supposing you have an image of a man and then one day, quite
by accident, you come upon him in a strange mood, fmd him
behaving or speaking in a way you have never beHeved him capable
of Do you reject this unacceptable aspect of the man or do you
incorporate it in a larger picture of him ? Once he revealed himself
to you completely, you thought. Now you find him quite other.
Are you at fault or is he ?

I can well imagine a man for whom writing is a Hfe's task revealing
so many aspects of himself, as he goes along, that he baffles and

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

bewilders his readers. And the more baffled and bewildered they are
by the protean character of his being, the less qualified are they, in
my opinion, to talk of " masterpieces " or of " revelation." A
mind open and receptive would at least wait until the last word had
been written. That at least. But it is the nature of little minds to
kill a man off before his time, to arrest his development at that point
which is most comfortable for one's peace of mind. Should an
author set himself a problem which is not to the Hking or the under-
standing of your little man, what happens ? Why, the classic avowal :
" He*s not the writer he used to be ! " Meaning, always, " he*s not
the writer /il?«ou/."

As creative writers go, Giono is still a comparatively young man.
There will be more ups and downs, from the standpoint of carping
critics. He will be dated and re-dated, pigeonholed and re-pigeon-
holed, resurrected and re-resurrected — until the fmal dead line.
And those who enjoy this game, who identify it with the art of
interpretation, vdll of course undergo many changes themselves —
in themselves. The diehards will make sport of him until the very
end. The tender idealists will be disillusioned time and again, and
will also find their beloved again and again. The skeptics will
always be on the fence, if not the old one another one, but on the
fence.

Whatever is written about a man Hke Giono tells you more about
the critic or interpreter than about Giono. For, hke the song of the
world, Giono goes on and on and on. The critic perpetually pivots
around his rooted, granulated self Like the girouette, he tells which
way the wind is blowing — but he is not of the v^nnd nor of the airs.
He is like an automobile without spark plugs.

A simple man who does not boast of his opinions but who is
capable of being moved, a simple man who is devoted, loving and
loyal is far better able to tell you about a writer like Giono than the
learned critics. Trust the man whose heart is moved, the man whose
withers can still be wrung. Such men are with the writer when he
orders his creation. They do not desert the writer when he moves in
ways beyond their understanding. Becoming is their silence and
instructive. Like the very wise, they know how to hold themselves
in abeyance.

" Each day," says Miguel de Unamuno, " I beUeve less and less in
ii6

JEAN GIONO

the social question, and in the poHtical question, and in the moral
question, and in all the other questions that people have invented in
order that they shall not have to face resolutely the only real question
that exists — the human question. So long as v^e are not facing this
question, all that we are now doing is simply making a noise so that
we shall not hear it."

Giono is one of the writers of our time who faces this human
question squarely. It accounts for much of the disrepute in which he
has found himself. Those who are active on the periphery regard
him as a renegade. In their view he is not playing the game. Some
refuse to take him seriously because he is " only a poet." Some admit
that he has a marvellous gift for narrative but no sense of reaHty.
Some beHcve that he is writing a legend of his region and not the
story of our time. Some wish us to beheve that he is only a dreamer.
He is all these things and more. He is a man who never detaches
himself from the world, even when he is dreaming. Particularly
the world of human beings. In his books he speaks as father, mother,
brother, sister, son and daughter. He does not depict the human
family against the background of nature, he makes the human family
a part of nature. If there is suffering and punishment, it is because
of the operation of divine law through nature. The cosmos which
Giono's figures inhabit is strictly ordered. There is room in it for all
the irrational elements. It does not give, break or weaken because the
fictive characters who compose it sometimes move in contradiction
of or defiance to the laws which govern our everyday world.
Giono's world possesses a reality far more understandable, far more
durable than the one we accept as world reahty. Tolstoy expressed
the nature of this other deeper reaHty in his last work :

This then is everything that I would like to say : I
would say to you that we are living in an age and under
conditions that cannot last and that, come what may, we are
obhged to choose a new path. And in order to follow it, it is
not necessary for us to invent a new religion nor to discover
new scientific theories in order to explain the meaning of
life or art as a guide. Above all it is useless to turn back
again to some special activity ; it is necessary to adopt one
course alone to free ourselves from the superstitions of false
Christianity and of state rule.
Let each one realize that he has no right, nor even the

117

THE BOOKS IN MT LIPI

f)ossibility, to organize the life of others ; that he should
ead his own hfe accordijig to the supreme religious law
revealed to him, and as soon as he has done this, the present
order will disappear ; the order that now reigns among
the so-called Christian nations, the order that has caused
the whole world to suffer, that conforms so Uttle to the
voice of conscience and that renders humanity more
miserable every day. Whatever you are : ruler, judge,
landlord, worker, or tramp, reflect and have pity on your
soul. No matter how clouded your brain has become
through power, authority and riches, no matter how
maltreated and harassed you are by poverty and humiUa-
tion, remember that you possess and manifest, as we all
do, a divine spirit which now asks clearly : * Why do
you martyrize younelf and cause suffering to everyone
with whom you come in contact ? ' Understand, rather,
who you really are, how truly insignificant and vulnerable
is the being you call you, and which you recognize in your
own shape, and to what extent, on the contrary, the real
you is immeasurably your spiritual self— and having under-
stood this, begin to live each moment to accomplish your
true mission in Hfe revealed to you by a universal wisdom,
the teachings of Christ, and your own conscience. Put the
best of yourself into increasing the emancipation of your
spirit from the illusions of the flesh and into love of your
neighbor, which is one and the same thing. As soon as
you begin to Hve this way you will experience the joyous
feehng of Hberty and well-being. You will be surprised to
find that the same exterior objectives which preoccupied
you and which were far from reaHzation, will no longer
stand in the way of your greatest possible happiness. And
if you are unhappy — I know you are unhappy — ponder
upon what I have stated here. It is not merely imagined
by me but is the result of the reflections and beUefs of the
most enhghtened human hearts and spirits ; therefore,
realize that this is the one and only way to free yourself
firom your imhappiness and to discover the greatest possible
good that Hfe can offer. This then is what I woula like to
say to my brothers, before I die.*

Notice that Tolstoy speaks of " the greatest possible happiness "
and " the greatest possible good." I feel certain that these are the
two goals which Giono wpuld have humanity attain. Happiness !
Who, since Maeterlinck has dwelt at any length on this state of

* The Law of Love and the Law of Y\olencc.
Ii8

JBAN •ION 0

being ? Who talks nowadays of " the greatest good " ? To talk of
happiness and of the good is now suspect. They have no place in our
scheme of reaHty. Yes, there is endless talk of the poHtical question,
the social question, the moral question. There is much agitation, but
nothing of moment is being accomplished. Nothing will be accom-
plished until the human being is regarded as a whole, until he is first
looked upon as a human being and not a pohtical, social or moral
animal.

As I pick up Giono's last book — Les Ames Fortes — to scan once
again the complete list of his published works, I am reminded of the
visit I made to his home during his absence. Entering the house I was
instantly aware of the profusion of books and records. The place
seemed to be overflowing with spiritual provender. In a bookcase,
high up near the ceiling, were the books he had written. Even then,
eleven years ago, an astounding number for a man of his age. I look
again, now, at the list as it is given opposite the title page of his last
work, published by Gallimard. How many I have still to read !
And how eloquent are the titles alone ! Solitude de la Pitii^ Le Poids
du Ciel, Naissance de VOdyssie, Le Serpent d'Etoiles, Les Vraies
Richesses, Fragments d*un Dduge, Fragments d'un Paradis, Presentation
dePan . . . A secret understanding links me to these unknown works.
Often, at night, when I go into the garden for a quiet smoke, when
I look up at Orion and the other constellations, all so intimate a part
of Giono's world, I wonder about the contents of these books I have
not read, which I promise myself I will read in moments of utter
peace and serenity, for to ** crowd them in " would be an injustice
to Giono. I imagine him also walking about in his garden, stealing
a look at the stars, meditating on the work in hand, bracing himself
for renewed conflicts with editors, critics and pubHc. In such
moments it does not seem to me that he is far away, in a country
called France. He is in Manosque, and between Manosque and Big
Sur there is an aflinity which abolishes time and space. He is in that
garden where the spirit of his mother still reigns, not far from the
manger in which he was bom and where his father who taught
him so much worked at the bench as a cobbler. His garden has a wall
around it ; here there is none. That is one of the diflerences between
the Old World and the New. But there is no wall between Giono's
spirit and my own. That is what draws me to him — the openness

119

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

of his spirit. One feels it the moment one opens his books. One
timibles in drugged, intoxicated, rapt.

Giono gives us the world he Hvcs in, a world of dream, passion
and reality. It is French, yes but that would hardly suffice to describe
it. It is of a certain region of France, yes, but that does not define it.
It is distinaly Jean Giono's world and none other. If you are a
kindred spirit you recognize it inmiediately, no matter where you
were bom or raised, what language you speak, what customs you have
adopted, what tradition you follow. A man does not have to be
Chinese, nor even a poet, to recognize immediately such spirits as
Lao-tse and Li Po. In Giono's work what every sensitive,
full-blooded individual ought to be able to recognize at once
is " the song of the world." For me this song, of which each
new book gives endless refrains and variations, is far more
precious, far more stirring, far more poetic, than the " Song
of Songs.** It is intimate, personal, cosmic, untrammeled — and
ceaseless. It contains the notes of the lark, the nightingale,
the thrush ; it contains the whir of the planets and the almost
inaudible wheeling of the constellations ; it contains the sobs,
cries, shrieks and wails of wounded mortal souls as well as the laughter
and ululations of the blessed ; it contains the seraphic music of the
angehc hosts and the howls of the damned. In addition to this
pandemic music Giono gives the whole gamut of color, taste, smell
and feel. The most inanimate objects yield their mysterious vibra-
tions. The philosophy behind this symphonic production has no
name ; its function is to Hberate, to keep open all the sluices of the
soul, to encourage speculation, adventure and passionate worship.

** Be what thou art, only be it to the utmost ! " That is what it
whispers.

Is this French ?

I20

INFLUENCES

I HAVE already mentioned that in the Appendix I am listing allf
the books I can recall ever reading. There are a number of reasons •
why I am doing this. One is that I enjoy playing games, and this is
one of the oldest of games : the pursuit game. A better reason is
that I have never once seen a list of the books read by any of my
favorite authors. I would give anything, for example, to know all^ 1 j

the titles of those books which Dostoievsky devoured, or PJmbaud. \
BuTthere is a more important reason still, and it is this : people are
always wondering what were an author's influences, upon what
great writer or writers did he model himself, who offered the most
inspiration, which ones affected his style most, and so on. I intend
presendy to give the line of my descent, in as strictly chronological
order as possible. I shall give specific names and I shall include a few
men and women (some of them not writen at all) whom I regard
as " living books," raeaing by this that they had (for me) all
the weight, power, prestige, magic and sorcelry which are attributed
to the authors of great books. I shall also include a few ** countries ** ;
they are, all of them, countries I have penetrated only through
reading, but they are as alive for me and have affected my thought
and behavior as much as if they were books.

But to come back to the list ... I wish to emphasize the fact
that I am listing both good and bad books. With respect tp some I
must confess that I am unable to say which were good for me and
which bad. If I were to offer my own criterion of good and bad
with respect to books, I would say — those which are alive and those
which are dead. Certain books not only give a sense of Ufe, sustain
Ufe, but, like certain rare individuals, augment Ufe. Some authors
long dead are less dead than the Hving, or, to put it another way,
** the most aHve of the dead." When these books were written,
who wrote them matters little. They will breathe the flame of life
until books are no more. To discuss which books belong in this

121

THE BOOKS IN MT LIFI

category, to dispute the reasons pro and con, arc futile, in my
opinion. On this subject each man is his own best judge. He is
right, for himself. We need not agree as to the source of a man's
inspiration or the degree of his vitaHty ; it is enough to know and to
^recognize that he is inspired, that he is thoroughly aHvc.

Despite what I have just said, there will be endless speculation as
to which authors, which books, influenced me most. I cannot hope
to arrest these speculations. Just as each man interprets an author's
work in his own limited way, so will the readers of this book, on
scanning my list, draw their own conclusions as to my " true "
influences. The subject is fraught with mystery, and I leave it a
mystery. I know, however, that this list will give extraordinary
pleasure to some of my readers, perhaps chiefly to the readers of a
century hence. Impossible as it is to recall all the books one has read,
I am nevertheless reasonably sure that I shall be able to give at least
half I repeat, I do not regard myself as a great reader. The few men
I know who have read widely, and whom I have sounded out on the
extent of their reading, startle me by their repHes. Twenty to thirty
thousand books, I perceive, is a fair average for a cultured individual
of our time. As for myself, I doubt if I have read more than five
thousand, though I may well be in error.

When I look over my list, which never ceases to grow, I am
appalled by the obvious waste of time which the reading of most
of these books entailed. It is often said of writers that " all is grist
for the mill." Like all sayings, this one too must be taken with a
grain of salt. A writer needs very Uttle to stimulate him. The fact
of being a writer means that more than other men he is given to
cultivating the imagination. Life itself provides abundant material.
Superabundant material. The more one writes the less books stimu-
late. One reads to corroborate, that is, to enjoy one's own thoughts
expressed in the multifarious ways of others.

In youth one's appetite, both for raw experience and for books,
is uncontrolled. Where there is excessive hunger, and not mere
appetite, there must be vital reason for it. It is bfatantly obvious
that our present way of Ufe docs not offer proper nourishment. If
it did I am certain we would read less, work less, strive less. Wc
would not need substitutes, wc would not accept vicarious modes of
existence. This appHcs to all realms : food, sex, travel, religion,

122

INFLUENCES

adventure. We get off to a bad start. We travel the broad highway
with one foot in the grave. We have no definite goal or purpose, nor
the fireedom of being without goal or purpose. We are, most of us,
sleepwalkers, and we die without ever opening our eyes.

If people enjoyed deeply everything they read there would be
no excuse for talking this way. But they read as they Hve — aim-
lessly, haphazardly, feebly and flickeringly. If they are already
asleep, then whatever they read only plunges them into a deeper
sleep. If they are merely- lethargic, they become more lethargic.
If they are idlers, they become worse idlers. And so on. Only the
man who is wide awake is capable of enjoying a book, of extracting
fi:om it what is vital. Such a man enjoys whatever comes into his
experience, and, unless I am horribly mistaken, makes no distinction
between the experiences offered through reading and the manifold
experiences of everyday Ufe. The man who thoroughly enjoys what
he reads or does, or even what he says, or simply what he dreams or
imagines, profits to the full. The man who seeks to profit, through
one form of discipline or another, deceives himself It is because I am
so firmly convinced of this that I abhor the issuance of lists of books
for those who are about to enter life. The advantages to be derived
from this sort of self-education are even more dubious, to my way
of thinking, than the supposed advantages to be obtained from ordi-
nary methods of education. Most of the books given on such Hsts
cannot begin to be understood and appreciated until one has hved
and thought for himself Sooner or later the whole kit and caboodle
has to be regurgitated.

And now here are names for you. Names of those whose influence
I am aware of and which, through my writings, I have testified to
again and again.* To begin with, let me say that everything which
came within the field of my experience influenced me. Those who
do not fmd themselves mentioned should know that I include them
too. As for the dead, they knew in advance, doubtless, that they
would put their seal on me. I mention them only because it is in
order.

First of all come the books of childhood, those dealing with
legend, myth, tales of imagination, all of them saturated with

* See Appendix for reference to authors and books touched ox\ \n my
\vritings, a$ yi^eU 3S tp complete essays on certain ones.

J23

'^^'

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

mystery, heroism, supematuralism, the marvelous and the impossible,
with crime and horror of all sorts and all degrees, with cruelty, with
justice and injustice, with magic and prophecy, with perversion,
ignorance, despair, doubt and death. These books affected my whole
being : they formed my character, my way of looking at Ufe, my
attitude towards woman, towards society, laws, morals, government.
They determined the rhythm of my Ufe. From adolescence on, the
books I read, particularly those I adored or was enslaved by, aflfected
me only partially. That is, some affected the man, some the writer,
some the naked soul. This perhaps because my being had already
become fragmented. Perhaps too because the substance of adult
reading cannot possibly affect the whole man, his whole being.
There are exceptions, to be sure, but they are rare. At any rate, the
whole province of childhood reading belongs under the sign of
anonymity ; those who are curious will discover the tides in the
Appendix. I read what other children read. I was not a prodigy, nor
did I make special demands. I took what was given me and I swal-
lowed it. The reader who has followed me thus far has by this time
gleaned the nature of my reading. The books read in boyhood I have
also touched upon already, signalling such names as Henty first and
foremost, Dumas, Bider Haggard, Sienkiewicz and others, most
of them quite familiar. Nothing unusual about this period, unless
that I read too much.

Where the specific influences commence is at the brink of man-
hood, that is, fiom the time I first dreamed that I too might one
day become " a writer." The names which follow may be regarded
then as the names of authors who influenced me as a man and as a
writer, the two becoming more and more inseparable as time went
on. From early manhood on my whole activity revolved about, or
was motivated by, the fact that F thought of myself, first potentially,
then embryonically, and finally manifesdy, as a writer. And so, if
my memory serves me right, here is my genealogical line :
Boccaccio, Petronius, Rabelais, Whitman, Emerson, Thoreau,
MaeterUnck, Romain Rolland, Plotinus, HeracHtus, Nietzsche,
Dostoievsky (and other Russian writers of the Nineteenth Century),
the ancient Greek dramatists, the Elizabethan dramatists (excluding
Shakespeare), Theodore Dreiser, Knut Hamsun, D. H. Lawrence,
James Joyce, Thomas Mann, Elie Faure, Oswald Spengler, Marcel

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INFLUBNC ES

Proust, Van Gogh, the Dadaists and Surrealists, Balzac, Lewis
Carroll, Nijinsky, Rimbaud, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Giono, Celine,
everything I read on Zen Buddhism, everything I read about China,
India, Tibet, Arabia, Africa, and of course the Bible, the men who
wrote it and especially the men who made the King James version,
for it was the language of the Bible rather than its ** message "
which I got first and which I will never shake off.

What were the subjects which made me seek the authors I love,
which permitted me to be influenced, which formed my style, my
character, my approach to life ? Broadly these : the love of life
itself, the pursuit of truth, wisdom and understanding, mystery,
the power of language, the antiquity and the glory of man, eternality,
the purpose of existence, the oneness of everything, self-liberation,
the brotherhood of man, the meaning of love, the relation of sex to
love, the enjoyment of sex, humor, oddities and eccentricities in all
life's aspects, travel, adventure, discovery, prophecy, magic (white
and black), art, games, confessions, revelations, mysticism, more
particularly the mystics themselves, the varieties of faith and worship,
the marvelous in all realms and under all aspects, for ** there is only
the marvelous and nothing but the marvelous."

Have I left out some items ? Fill them in yourself ! I was, and
still am, interested in everything. Even in politics — ^when regarded
from " the perspective of the bird." But the struggle of the human
being to emancipate himself, that is, to Uberate himself from the
prison of his own making, that is for me the supreme subject. That
is why I fail, perhaps, to be completely " the writer." Perhaps that
is why, in my works, I have given so much space to sheer experience
of Hfe. Perhaps too, though the critics so often fail to perceive it,
that is why I am powerfully drawn to the men of wisdom, the men
who have experienced life to the full and who give life — artists,
religious figures, pathfmders, innovators and iconoclasts of all
sorts. And perhaps— why not say it ? — that is why I have so little
respect for literature, so little regard for the accredited authors, so
little appreciation of the transitory revolutionaries. For me the only
true revolutionaries are the inspirers and activators, figures like Jesus,
Lao-tse, Gautama the Buddha, Akhnaton, Ramakrishna, Krishna-
murti- The yardstick I employ is life : how men stand in relation to
hfe. Not whether they succeeded in overthrowing a government, a

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

social order, a religious form, a moral code, a system of cducaticMi,
an economic tyranny. Rather, how did they affect life itself? For,
what distinguishes the men I have in mind is that they did not
impose their authority on man ; on the contrary, they sought
to destroy authority. Their aim and purpose was to open up life,
to make man hungry for Hfe, to exalt life — and to refer all questions
back to life. They exhorted man to realize that he had all freedom
in himself, that he was not to concern himself with the fate of
the world (which is not his problem) but to solve his own individual
problem, which is a question of liberation, nothing else.

And now for " the Hving books "... Several times I have
said that there were men and women who came into my experience,
at various times, whom I regard as " Hving books." I have explained
why I refer to them in this fashion. I shall be even more expHcit
now. They stay with me, these individuals, as do the good books.
I can open them up at will, as I would a book. When I glance
at a page of their being, so to speak, they talk to me as eloquently
as they did when I met them in the flesh. The books they left me
are their Hves, their thoughts, their deeds. It was the fusion of
thought, being and act which made each of these Hves singular
and inspiring to me. Here they are, then, and I doubt that I have
forgotten a single one : Benjamin Fay Mills, Emma Goldman,
W. E. Burghardt Dubois, Hubert Harrison, Elizabeth Gurley
Flynn, Jim Larkin, John Cowper Powys, Lou Jacobs, Blaise
Cendrars. A curious assemblage indeed. All but one are, or were,
known figures. There are others, of course, who without knowing
it played an important r6le in my Hfe, who helped to open the
book of hfe for me. But the names I have cited are the ones I shall
always revere, the ones I feel forever indebted to.

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VII

LIVING BOOKS

Lou Jacobs, that one unknown figure, I can recall at will merely
by saying Asmodeus, or The Devil on Two Sticks, Curious that a
book I never read should be the magic touchstone. The book
was always there on the shelf, in his Httle flat. Several times I picked
it up, scanned a page or two, then put it down. For almost forty
years now I have kept in the back of my head this unread Asmodeus.
Next to it, on the same shelf, was Gil Bias, which I never read
cither.

Why do I feel compelled to talk of this unknown man ? Because,
among other things, he taught me to laugh at misfortune. It was
during a period of dire woe that I made his acquaintance. Everything
was black, black, black. No egress. No hope of egress. I was more
a prisoner than a man serving a life sentence in the penitentiary.*
Living then with my first mistress, the imoffidal janitor of the
three-storey house in which we shared a flat with a young man
dying of tuberculosis and a trolley conductor who was our star
boarder, strictly surveilled by the ogress who owned the house,
without fimds, without work, with no knowledge of what I wanted
to do or could do, convinced that I had no talent — twelve lines
with a pencil were sufficient to corroborate the suspicion — trying
to save the Ufe of the young man, who was my mistress' son, hiding
away from fiiends and parents, eating my heart out with remone
for having surrendered the girl I loved (my first love !), the slave
of sex, the girouette who veered with the sHghtest breeze, lost,
utterly lost, I discovered one day on the floor below this man
Lou Jacobs, who forthwith became my Guide, my Comforter,
my Bright Green Wind. No matter what the hour, what the

* " And a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have closed
upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat hangs
upon our bodies as though it had been masticated by every mouth. A
mght comes when man weeps and woman is emptied." (From Btibti of
Montparnasse by Charles-Louis Philippe.)

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIPI

occasion, no matter if Death were knocking at the door, Lou Jacobs
could laugh and make me laugh with him. *' For all your ills
laughter ! "

I had then only a furtive acquaintance with Rabelais, if my
memory serves me right. But Lou Jacobs was his intimate, I am
certain. He knew all who brought joy as well as those who had
known sorrow. Whenever he passed Shakespeare's statue in the
park he doffed his hat. " Why not ? " he would say. He could
redte the lamentations of Job and give me the remedy in the next
breath. (" What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the
son of man, that thou visitest him ? ")

He always appeared to be doing nothing, nothing at all. The
door was ever open to any and every one. Conversation began a
once — instanter. Usually he was half-crocked, a state beyond which
he never appeared to progress, or degenerate, if you prefer. His
skin was like parchment, the face seamed with fine wrinkles, the
abundant head of hair always oily, tousled, and falling over his
eyes. He might have been a centenarian, though I doubt if he was
a day over sixty.

His "job " was that of certified public accountant, for which he
was well paid. He seemed to have no ambition of any sort. A game
of chess, if you wished it, was to him as good a way of passing the
time as any other pursuit. (He played the most unorthodox, the
most erratic, eccentric, briUiant game imaginable.) He slept little,
was always thoroughly alive and awake, jovial, full of banter and
raillery, outwardly mocking but inwardly reverencing, inwardly
adoring and worshipping.

Books ! Never a title I mentioned but he had read the book.
And he was honest. The impression he left with me was that he
had read everything worth reading. In talking he always came
back to Shakespeare and the Bible. In this he reminded me of
Frank Harris, who also talked incessantly of Shakespeare and the
Bible, or rather of Shakespeare and Jesus.

Without being in the least aware of it, I was receiving from
this man my first real schooling. It was the indirect method of
education. As with the ancients, his technique consisted in indicat-
ing that " it " was not this, not that. Whatever ** it " was, and
of course it was the all, he taught mc never to approach it head

£28

LIVING BOOKS

on, never to name or define. The oblique method of art Hnt
and last things. But no first and no last. Always firom the center
outward. Always the spiral motion : never the straight line, never
sharp angles, never the impasse or cul-de-sac.

Yes, Lou Jacobs possessed a wisdom I am only begitming to acquire.
He had the faculty of looking upon everything as an open book.
He had ceased reading to discover the secrets of life ; he read for
sheer enjoyment. The essence of all he read had permeated his
entire being, had become one with his total experience of Hfe.
** There are not more than a dozen basic themes in all Uterature,"
he once said to me. But then he quickly added that each man had
his own story to tell, and that it was unique. I suspected that he,
too, had once endeavored to write. Certainly no one could express
himself better or more clearly. His wisdom, however, was the sort
that is not concerned with the imparting of it. Though he knew
how to hold his tongue, no man enjoyed conversation more than
he. Moreover, he had a way of never closing a subject. He was
content to skirmish and reconnoiter, to throw out feelers, to dangle
clues, to give hints, to suggest rather than to inform. Whether
one wished it or not, he compelled his Hstener to think for himself
I can't recall ever once receiving advice or instruction fi:om him,
yet everything which issued from his mouth constituted advice
and instruction ... if one knew how to take it !

In Maeterlinck's works, particularly a book such as Wisdom
and Destiny t there are inspiring references to great figures of the
past (in Ufe and in Uterature) who weathered adversity with noble
equanimity. Such books are no longer in favor, I fear. We do
not turn for comfort, consolation or renewed courage to authors
like Maeterlinck any longer. Nor to Emerson, with whom his
name is often linked. Their spiritual pabulum is suspect nowa-
days. Dommage ! The truth is, we really have no great authors to
turn to these days — if we are in search of eternal verities. We have
surrendered to the flux. Our hopes, feeble and flickering, seem to
be completely centered on poUtical solutions. Men are turning
away from books, which is to say, from writers, fi:om ** intellec-
tuals." An excellent sign — if only they were turning firom books
to Ufe ! But are they ? Never was the fear of life so rampant. The
fear of Ufe has replaced the fear of death. Life and death have come

129

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

to mean the same thing. Yet never did Ufe hold more promise
than now. Never before in the history of man was the issue so clear
— the issue between creation and annihilation. Yes, by all means
throw away your books ! Especially if they obscure the issue.
Life itself was never more an open book than .it this present moment.
Butt cm you read the Book of Life ?

{** What are you doing there on the floor t "
** I am teaching the alphabet to the ants.**)

It's a strange thing, but outrageously noticeable latterly, that
the only gay, youthful spirits among us are the " old dogs.** They
continue blithely with their work of creation no matter what
dire forebodings poison the air. I think of certain painters prin-
cipally, men who already have an immense body of work behind
them. Perhaps their vision of things was never dimmed by the
reading of many books. Perhaps their very choice of profession
safeguarded them against a bleak, sterile, morbid view of the
universe. Their signs and symbols are of another order from the
writer's or thinker*s. They deal in forms and images, and images
have a way of remaining fresh and vivid. I feel that the painter
looks at the world more directly. At any rate, these veterans whom
I have in mind, these gay old dogs, have a youthful gaze. Whereas
our young in years see with a^dim, blurred vision ; they are filled
with fear and fright. The thought which haunts them day and
night is— will this world be snuffed out before we have had a
chance to enjoy it i And there is no one who dares to tell them
chat even if the world were snuffed out tomorrow, or the day
after, it would not really matter— since the Hfe they crave to enjoy
is imperishable. Nor does any one tell them that the destruction
of this planet, or its preservation and everlasting glory, hinges on
their own thoughts, their own deeds. The individual has now
become identified, involuntarily, with society. Few are able to
sec any longer that society' is made up of individuals. Who is an
individual any longer ? What is an individual ? And what is society,
if it is no longer the sum or aggregate of the individuals which
constitute it i

I remember, more than thirty years ago it was, reading Carlyle's
Heroes and Hero Worship on ray way to and firom work each day.
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LIVING BOOKS

It was in the elevated train that I read him. One day a thought he
enunciated moved me so profoundly that when I looked up from
the page I had. difficulty recognizing the all too famiHar figures
surrounding me. I was in another world — but completely. Some-
thing he had said — ^what it was I no longer remember — had shaken
me to the roots of my being. Then and there I had the conviction
that my fate, or destiny, would be different from those about me.
I suddenly saw myself Hfted out— ejected ! — from the circle which
imprisoned me. A momentary feeling of pride and exaltation,
of vanity too no doubt, accompanied this revelation, but it soon
vanished, soon gave way to a state of quiet acceptance and deep
resolution, awakening at the same time a stronger sense of com-
munion, a much more human bond between myself and my neighbor.

Carlyle is another writer of whom not much is said nowadays.
" Too much fustian," no doubt. Too fuHginous. Besides, we no
longer worship heroes, or, if we do make use of the word, it is
to distinguish those who are on a level with ourselves. Lindbergh,
for example, was a tremendous hero — for a day. We have no
permanent pantheon in which our heroes may be placed, adored
and reverenced. Our pantheon is the daily rag, which is erected
and destroyed from day to day.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of reacting,
is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses. I can
illustrate this thought by choosing, for example, the way in which
most of us read. If it is a book which excites and stimulates us to
thought, we race through it. We cannot wait to know what it
is leading to ; we want to grasp, to possess, the hidden message.
Time and again, in such books, we stumble on a phrase, a passage,
sometimes a whole chapter, so stimulating and provocative that
we scarcely understand what we are reading, so charged is our
mind with thoughts and associations of our own. How seldom do
we interrupt the reading in order to surrender ourselves to the
luxury of our own thoughts ! No, wc stifle and suppress our
thoughts, pretending that we will return to them when we have
fmished the book. We never do, of course. How much better
and wiser it would be, how much more instructive and enriching,
if we proceeded at a snail's pace ! What matter if it took a year,
instead of a few days, to fmish the book ?

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

" But I haven't time to read books that way ! ** it will be objected.
" I have other things to do. I have duties and responsibilities."

Precisely. Whoever speaks thus is the very one for whom these
words are intended. Whoever fears to neglect his duties by reading
leisurely and thoughtfully, by cultivating his own thoughts, will
neglect his duties anyway, and for worse reasons. Perhaps it was
intended that you lose your job, your wife, your home. If the
reading of a book can stir you so deeply as to make you forget
your responsibilities, then those responsibilities could not have
had much meaning for you. Then you had higher respon-
sibihties. If you had trusted your own inner promptings you would
have followed through to firmer ground, to vantage ground.
But you were afraid a voice might whisper : '* Turn here ! Knock
there ! Enter by this door ! " You were afraid of being deserted
and abandoned. You thought of security instead of new life, new
fields of adventure and exploration.

This is merely an example of what may happen, or not happen,
in reading a book. Extend it to the multitudinous opportunities
which life constantly offers and it is easy to see why men fail not
only to become heroes but even plain individuals. The way one
reads a book is the way one reads hfe. Maeterlinck, whom I referred
to a moment ago, writes as profoundly and engagingly about
insects, flowers, stars, even space itself, as he does about men and
women. For him the world is a continuous, interactive, inter-
changing whole. There are no walls or barriers. There is no death
anywhere. A moment of time is as rich and complete as ten thousand
years. Truly, a luxurious kind of thinking !

But let me get back to my " bright green wind "... I got
off on Maeterlinck and Carlyle because there was something in
Lou Jacobs' character which reminded me of both these men.
Perhaps I detected beneath his gaiety and bright insouciance a hint
of the sombre and the tragic. He was a man, I must say, whom
no one knew much about, who appeared to have no intimates,
and who never talked about himself When he left his office at
four in the afternoon no one on God's earth could predict where
his feet would lead him before he arrived home for dinner Usually
he stopped off at a bar or two, where he might have regaled himself
by conversing with a jockey, a prizefighter, or a broken-down
133

LIVING BOOKS

pimp. He was certainly more in his element with such people
dian with the more respectable members of society. Sometimes
he would wander down to the fish market and lose himself in
contemplation of the creatures of the deep, not forgetting however
to bring home an assortment of oysters, clams, shrimps, eels or
whatever else pleased his fancy. Or he might wander into a second-
hand bookshop, not so much to find a rare old book as to talk to
some old crony of a bookdealer, for he loved the talk of books
even more than books themselves. But no matter with what firesh
experiences he was charged, when you encountered him after
dinner he was always free, ready to take any stance, and open to
any suggestion. It was in the evening I always saw him. Usually,
when I entered, I found him sitting at the window, gazing down
upon the passing show. As with Whitman, everything seemed
to be of equal and absorbing interest to him. I never knew him
to be ill, never saw him in a bad mood. He might just have lost
his last cent, but never would anyone have suspected it.

I spoke of the way he played chess. Never did an opponent
intimidate me more than he. To be sure, I was not then, nor am
I now, a good player. Probably not even as good as Napoleon.
When, for instance, Marcel Duchamp once invited me to play a
game with him, I forgot everything I knew about the game because
of my imholy respect for his knowledge of it. With Lou Jacobs
it was wone. I could never arrive at any conclusions about his
knowledge of the game. What defeated me with him was his
utter nonchalance. " Would you like me to give you a queen or
two rooks or a knight and two bishops i ** He never uttered these
words but they were implied by his manner. He would open
in any old fashion, as though out of contempt for my abiHty, though
it was never that ; he had contempt for no one. No, he did it
probably merely to enjoy himself, to see what Hberties he could
take, to see how far he could stretch a point. It seemed to make
no diflference to him whether he were winning or losing the game ;
he played with the ease and assurance of a wizard, enjoying the
false moves as well as the briUiant ones. Besides, what could it
possibly mean to a man Uke him to lose a game of chess, or ten
games, or a hundred i " I'll be playing it in paradise," he seemed
to be saying. ** Come on, let's have fun ! Make a bold move, a

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

rash move ! " Of course the more rashly he played the more
cautious I grew. I suspected him of being a genius. And was he
not a genius to thus bewilder and confuse me i

The way he played chess was the way he played the game of
hfe. Only the " old dogs " can do it. Lao-tse was one of these gay
old dogs. Sometimes, when the image of Lao-tse seated on the
back of a water buffalo crosses my mind, when I think of that
steady, patient, kindly, penetrating grin of his, that wisdom so
fluid and benevolent, I think of Lou Jacobs sitting before me at
the chessboard. Ready to play the game anyway you liked. Ready
to rejoice over his ignorance or to beam with pleasure at his own
tomfoolery. Never mahdous, never petty, never envious, never
jealous. A great comforter, yet remote as the dog star. Always
bowing himself out of the picture, yet the farther he retreated the
closer he was to you. All those sayings from Shakespeare or from
the Bible with which he sprinkled his talk, how much more instruc-
tive were they than the weightiest sermon ! He never Hfted a finger
for emphasis, never raised his voice to make a point ; everything
of moment was expressed by the laughing wrinkles which cracked
his parched face when he spoke. The sound of his laughter only
the " ancient ones " could reproduce. It came from on high, as if
tuned in to our earthly vibrations. It was the laughter of the gods,
the laughter which heals, which, sustained by its own unimpeded
wisdom of hfe, splinters and shatters all learning, all seriousness, all
morahty, all pretense and artifice.

Let me leave him there, his face cracked with wrinkles, his
laughter echoing through the chandeUers of hell. Let me think of
him as he stood bowing me out of an evening, a nightcap in his
hand, the ice faintly dnlding in the glass, his eyes bright as beads,
his mustache moist with whisky, his breath divinely perfimied
with garhc, om'on, leek and alcohol. He was not of this time nor
of any time that I know. He was the perfect misfit, the contented
fool, the artfiil teacher, the great comforter, the mysteriously
anonymous one. And he was not any one of these alone but all
together. Hail, bright spirit ! What a book of life you were !

And now to speak of another " Hving book," this one a knoum
figure. This man is still alive, thank the Lord, and Uving a rich,
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LIVING BOOKS

peaceful life in a comer of Wales. I mean John Cnwpcr Powys,
or, as he dubs himself in his Autobiography,* " Prester John."

It was only a few years after Lou Jacobs disappeared out of my
Ufc that I encountered this famous author and lecturer. I met him
after one of his lectures at the Labour Temple, on Second Avenue
in New York.

A few months ago, having discovered his whereabouts through
a fiiend, I acted upon an impulse and wrote him a long-deferred
letter of homage. It was a letter I should have written twenty
years ago at least. I would have been a much richer man today
had I done so. For, to get a letter from " Prester John " is something
of an event in one's Ufe.

This man, whose lectures I attended frequently, whose books I
devoured hungrily, I met just once in the flesh. It took all the
courage I then possessed to go up to him after the lecture and say
a few words of appreciation, to shake his hand and then flee with
tail between my legs. I had an unholy veneration for the man. Every
word he uttered seemed to go straight to the mark. All the authors
I was then passionate about were the authors he was writing and
lecturing about. He was like an oracle to me.

Now that I have found him again, now that I hear from him
regularly, it is as if I had recovered my youth. He is still *' the
master " to me. His words, even today, have the power of bewitch-
ing me. At this very moment I am deep in his Autobiography, a
most nourishing, stimulating book of 652 close-packed pages.
It is the sort of biography I revel in, being utterly frank, truthftil,
sincere, and containing a superabundant wealth of trivia (most
illuminating !) as well as the major events, or turning points, in
one's life. " If all the persons who wrote autobiographies would
dare to put down the things that in their Hfe have caused them
their most intense misery, it would be a much greater boon than
all these testy justifications of public actions," says the author.
Like Celine, Powys has the faculty of telling of his misfortunes
with humor. Like Celine, he can speak of himself in the most
derogatory terms, call himself a fool, a clown, a weakling, a coward,
a degenerate, even a ** sub-human" being, without in the least

* Published by Johii Lane, The Bodley Head, London, 1934.

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THE BOOKS IN MT LIFE

HiminkKing his Stature. His book is full of life-wisdom, revealed
not so much through big incidents as Uttle ones.

It is in his sixtieth year that the book is written. There arc two
passages, out of many, many, that I should like to quote, which
reveal something of the man that is particularly precious to me.
Here is one : " What is it that we all lose as we get older ? It is
something in life itself Yes, it is in Ufe, but it is a much deeper
thing — ^no ! not exactly deeper ; I mean it is of a more precious
substance — than what we think of as * Hfe ' as we grow older.
Now I am inclined to think that to a quite unusual extent I have
retained to my sixtieth year the attitude of my early boyhood ;
and such being the case I am tempted to hold the view that the more
obstinately I exploit this childishness and take my stand on this
childishness the wiser — if the less human — my mature Hfe will
be." The other runs as follows : " My whole life can be divided
in two halves ; the first up to the time I was forty ; and the second
after the time I was forty. During the first half I struggled desperately
to evoke and to arrange my feelings according to what I admired
in my favorite books ; but during the second half I struggled to
find out what my real feelings were and to refine upon them and to
balance thcij^ and to harmonize them, according to no one's method
but my ow^."

But to get back to the man I know — ^firom the lecture platform.
It was John Cowper Powys, descendant of the poet Cowper, son of
an English clergyman, with Welsh blood in his veins and the fire
and magic which invests all the Gaelic spirits, who first enlightened
me about the horrors and sublimities connected with the House of
Atreus. I remember most vividly the way he wrapped himself in
his gown, closed his eyes and covered them with one hand, before
launching into one of those inspired flights of eloquence which left
me diz2y and speechless. At the time I thought his pose and gestures
sensational, the expression perhaps of an over-dramatic temperament.
(He is, of course, an aaor, John Cowper Powys, but not on this
stage, as he himself points out. He is rather a kind of Spenglerian
aaor.) The oftener I listened to him, however, the more I read his
workS^ the less critical I became. Leaving the hall after his lectures,
I often felt as if he had put a spell upon me. A wondrous spell it was,
too. For, aside firom the celebrated experience with Emma Goldman
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LIVING BOOKS

in San Diego, it was my first intimate experience, my first real contact,
with the Hving spirit of those few rare beings who visit this earth.

Powys, needless to say, had his own select luminaries whom he
raved about. I use the word " raved " advisedly. I had never before
heard any one rave in public, particularly about authors, thinkers,
philosophers. Emma Goldman, equally inspired on the platform,
and often Sibylline in utterance, gave nevertheless the impression of
radiating from an intellectual center. Warm and emotional though
she was, the fire she gave off was an electrical one. Powys fulminated
with the fire and smoke of the soul, or the depths which cradle the
soul. Literature was for him like manna from above. He pierced
the veil time and again. For nourishment he gave us wounds, and
the scars have never healed.

Fatidical, if I remember rightly, was one of his favorite adjectives.
Why I should mention it now I don*t know, unless it was charged
with mysterious sunken associations which once had tremendous
significance for me. At any rate, his blood was saturated with racial
myths and legends, with memories of magical feats and superhuman
exploits. His hawk-like features, reminiscent of our own Robinson
Jeffers, gave me the impression of confronting a being whose ancestry
was different than ours, older, more obscure, more pagan, much
more pagan than our historical forbears. To me he seemed pre-
eminently at home in the Mediterranean world, that is the pre-
Mediterranean world of Atlantis. In short, he was " in the tradition."
Lawrence would have said of him that he was an " aristocrat of the
spirit." That is why, probably, he stands out in my memory as one
of the few men of culture I have known who could also be called
" democratic " — democratic in Whitman's sense of the word.
What he had in conmion with us inferior beings was a superlative
regard for the rights and privileges of the individual. All vital ques-
tions were of interest to him. It was this broad yet passionate
curiosity which enabled him to wrest from '* dead " epochs and
" dead " letters the universal human qualities which the scholar
and pedant lose sight of To sit at the feet of a Hving man, a contem-
porary, whose thoughts, feelings and emanations were kindred in
spirit to those of the glorious figures of the past was a great privilege.
I could visualize this representative of ours discoursing ably and
familiarly with such spirits as Pythagoras, Socrates, or Abdlard ;

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THEBOOKSINMYLIFB

I could never thus visualize John Dewey, for example, or Bertrand
Russell. I could appreciate and respect the intricacies of this mind,
something I am incapable of when it comes to Whitehead or
Ouspensky. My own limitotions, undoubtedly. But, there are men
who convince me in a few brief moments of their roundedness— I
know no better word to describe that quality which I beHeve
embraces, sums up, and epitomizes all that is truly human in us.
John Cowper Powys was a rounded individual. He illumined what-
ever he touched, always relating it to the central fires which nourish
the cosmos itself He was an ** interpreter *' (or poet) in the highest
sense of the word.

There are other more gifted men of our time, more brilliant
perhaps, more profound, possibly, but neither their proportions nor
their aspirations conform with this thoroughly human world in
which Powys takes his stance and has his being. On the closing page
of the Autobiography, which I could not resist glancing at, there
stands this paragraph which is so revelatory of the inner, essential
Powys : " The astronomical world is not all there is. We are in
touch with other dimensions, other levels of Hfe. And from among
the powers that spring from these other levels there rises up one
Power, all the more terrible because it refuses to practice cruelty, a
Power that is neither CapitaUst, nor Communist, nor Fascist, nor
Democratic, nor Nazi, a Power not of this world at all, but capable of
inspiring the individual soul with the wisdom of the serpent and the
harmlessness of the dove."

It is not at all surprising to me to discover that in the declining
years of his Hfe Powys has found time to give us a book on Rabelais
as weU as a book on Dostoievsky, two poles of the human spirit.
It is an unusual interpreter of the human spirit who can weigh and
balance two such diverse beings. In the whole realm of Hterature it is
difficult for me to think of two greater extremes than Rabelais and
Dostoievsky, both of whom I still worship. No writers could be
more mature than these two ; none reveal more eloquently the
eternal youth of the spirit. Curious that I should think of it at this
moment, but I doubt that Rimbaud, the very symbol of youth, ever
heard of his contemporary, Dostoievsky. This is one of the mys-
terious and anomalous features of the modem age which boasts of its
extended means of communication. It is in the Nineteenth Century
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LIVING BOOKS

particularly, this century so rich in demonic, prophetic and extremely
individualistic figures, that we are often astounded to learn that one
great figure did not know of the other's existence. Let the reader
confirm this fact for himself. It is undeniable and of vast significance.
Rabelais, a man of the Renaissance, knew his contemporaries. The
men of the Middle Ages, despite all imagined inconveniences,
communicated with one another and paid attendance upon one another.
The world of learning then formed a huge web, the filaments of
which were durable and electric. Our writers, the men who should
be expressing and shaping world trends, give the impression of
being incommunicado. Their significance, their influence, at any rate,
is virtually nil. The men of intellect, the writers, the artists of today,
are stranded on a reef which each successive breaker threatens to
pound into annihilation.

John Cowper Powys belongs to that breed of man which is never
extinguished. He belongs to the chosen few, who, despite the
cataclysms which rock the world, always find themselves in the
Ark. The covenant which he established with his fellowmen
constitutes the warrant and guaranty of his survival. How few
there are who have discovered this secret ! The secret, shall I say,
of incorporating oneself in the living spirit of the universe. I have
referred to him as " a Uving book." What is that but to say he is all
flame, all spirit ? The book which comes aUve is the book which has
been penetrated through and through by the devouring heart. Until
it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one which gave it
birth a book is dead to us. Words divested of their magic are but
dead hieroglyphs. Lives devoid of quest, enthusiasm, of give and
take, are as meaningless and barren as dead letters. To encounter a
man whom we can call a living book is to arrive at the very fount of
creation. He makes us witoess of the consuming fire which rages
throughout the universe entire and which gives not warmth alone
nor enlightenment, but enduring vision, enduring strength, enduring
courage.

139

VIII

THE DAYS OF MY LIFE

I HAVE just received from my friend Lawrence Powell the two
volumes of Rider Haggard's autobiography,* a work I have been
awaiting with the greatest impatience. I no more than unwrapped
the volumes, hurriedly scanned the table of contents, when I sat
down with feverish expectancy to read Chapter Ten — on King
Solomons Mines and She.

During the few weeks which have elapsed since reading She
my thoughts have never ceased to revolve about the genesis of this
" romance." Now that I have the author's own words before me
I am hterally astounded. Here is what he says :

I remember that when I sat down to the task my ideas as
to its development were of the vaguest. The only clear
notion that I had in my head was that of an immortal
woman inspired by an immortal love. All the rest shaped
itself round this figure. And it came — it came faster tnan
my poor aching hand could set it down.

This is virtually all he has to say about the conception of this
remarkable work. " The whole romance," he states, ** was completed
in a Httle over six weeks. Moreover, it was never rewritten, and the
manuscript carries but few corrections. The fact is that it was written
at white heat, almost without rest, and that is the best way to compose."

But perhaps I should add the following, which may contain a
surprise for the lovers of this extraordinary tale :

Well do I recall taking the completed manuscript to the
office of my literary agent, Mr. A. P. Watt, and throwing
it on the table with the remark : * There is what I shall be
remembered by.' Well do I recall also visiting Mr. Watt
at his office, which was then at 2 Paternoster Square, and
finding him out. As the business was urgent, and I did

* The Days of My Life, An Autobiography, by Sir H. Rider Haggard ;
Longmans, Green & Co., Ltd., London, 1926.
140

"the days op my lipb

not wish to have to return, I sat down at his table, asked
for some fookcap, and in the hour or two that I had to
wait wrote the scene of the destruction of She in the Fire
of Life. This, however, was of course a little while —
it may have been a few days — ^before I deUvered the
manuscript.

It was twenty years later, Haggard points out — " the time that I
had always meant to elapse" — that the sequel called Ayesha, or
The Return of She, was written.

As for the title, She, so evocative, so utterly unforgettable, here is
the origin of it, in his own words : ** She, if I remember aright, was
taken from a certain rag doll, so named, which a nurse at Bradenham
used to bring out of some dark recess in order to terrify those of my
brothers and sisters who were in her charge.**

Could anything be more disappointing, or more thrilling, at the
same time, than these bald, meagre facts i Where imaginative works
are concerned I suppose they are classic. If time permits, I intend to
run down the " facts '* about other great works of the imagination.
Meanwhile, and particularly because I am informed that there has
been a revival of interest in Rider Haggard*s works, I think it
pertinent to quote a letter written to the author by no less a person
than Walter Besant. Here it is :

12, Gay ton Crescent,
Hampstead

January 2, 1887.
My dear Haggard,

While I am under the spell of * Ayesha,* * which I have
only just finished, I must write to congratulate you upon
a work which most certainly puts you at the head — a long
way ahead — of all contemporary imaginative writers.
If fiction is best cultivated in the field of pure invention
then you are certainly the furst of modem novelists.
Solomons Mines is left far behind. It is not only the central
conception that is so splendid in its audacity, but it is your
logical and pitiless working out of the whole thing in its
inevitable details that strikes me with astonishment.

I do not know what the critics will say about it. Probablv
they will not read more than they can help and then will
let you off with a few general expressions. If the critic is
a woman she will put down this book with the remark

* Meaning She.

141

THB BOOKS IN MY LIFE

that it is impossible — almost all women have this feeling
towards the marvellous.

Whatever else you do, you will have She always behind
you for purposes of odious comparison. And whatever
critics say the book is bound to be a magnificent success.
Also it will produce a crop of imitators. And all the Httle
conventional storytellers will be jogged out of their grooves
— imtil they find new ones . . .

The book was indeed a great success, as the reports of sales firom
his publisher testify, not to speak of the letters which poured in on
the author firom all parts of the world, some of them from well-
known figures in the literary world. Haggard himself says that ** in
America it was pirated by the hundred thousand."

She was written in his thirtieth year, some time between the
beginning of February, 1886, and the i8th of March, that same year.
He began it about a month after finishing Je55. It was a remarkable
creative period, as the following indicates :

It would seem, therefore, that between January, 1885,
and March 18, 1886, vsrith my own hand, and unassisted
by any secretary, I wrote King Solomons Mines, Allan
Quatemiain, Jess and She. Also I followed my own profes-
sion, spending many hours of each day studying in
chamben, or in Court, where I had some devilling practice,
carried on my usual correspondence, and attended to the
affairs of a man with a young family and a certain landed
estate.

As I have often bitterly complained about the burden of answering
the thousands of letters I receive, I think the following observations
by Haggard may not be without interest ** to all and sundry " :

A Uttle later on the work grew even harder, for to it was
added the toil of an enormous correspondence hurled at
me by every kind of person from all over the earth. If
I may judge by those which remain marked with a letter
A for answered,* I seem to have done my best to reply
to all these scribes, hundreds of them, even down to the
autograph hunter, a task which must have taken up a
good part of every day, and this in addition to all my
other work. No wonder that my health began to give out
at last, goaded as I was at that period of my life by constant
and venomous attacks-
143

"the days of my life"

In The Rosy Crucifixion, where I dwell at length on my relations
with Stanley, my first firiend, there are frequent and usually mocking
references to Stanley's love of romances. It was nothing less than a
good " romance " which Stanley always hoped to write one day.
At this point in time I am better able to understand and appreciate
his heart-felt desire. Then I merely looked upon him as another
Pole — full of romantic nonsense.

I don't seem able to recall any discussion with him about BJder
Haggard, though I do remember that we spoke now and then of
Marie Corelli. Between the ages of ten and eighteen we saw almost
nothing of each other, and before that the ** discussion " of books
must have been altogether negUgible. It was when Stanley discovered
Balzac — The Wild Ass* Skin first of all — and soon after other
European writers, such as Pierre Loti, Anatole France, Joseph
Conrad, that we began to talk books, and in earnest. To be honest,
I doubt if I then imderstood clearly what Stanley meant by
"romances." To me the word was associated with claptrap, with all
that is unreal. I never suspected the part that *' reaUty " played in
this realm of pure imagination.

There is a most interesting dream, a recurrent one, which Rider
Haggard describes at some length. It ends thus :

a:^I scci. . . myself, younger than I am now, wearing
some sort of white garments and bending over the desk
at work, with papers spread before me. At the sight a
kind of terror seizes me lest this fair place should be but a
scented purgatory where, in payment for my sins, I am
doomed to write fiction for ever and a day !

* At what do I work ' e I ask, alarmed, of the guide,
who, shining steadily, stands at my side and shows me all.

* You write the history of a world* (or was it * o£the
world ' ? — I am not sure), is the answer . . .

A world or the world, what difference does it make i The point
is, as WiUiani James hints in liis Introduction to Fechner's Life After
Death, that ** God has a history." The imagination makes of all
worlds one, and in this world of ReaHty man plays the central
role, for here man and God are one and all is divine. When Haggard
voices the hope that in another life the subject of his toil may prove
to be not fiction but history (" which I love "), when he adds that

143

THEBOOKSINMYLIFB

" in all the worlds above us there must be much history to record
(and much good work to do)," he is saying, I feel, that the proper
subject for a writer is the endless story of creation. The history of
man is bound up with the history of God, and the history of God
is the revelation of the eternal mystery of creation.

"I think I am right," says Haggard, ** in saying that no one has
ever written a really first-class romance dwelling solely, for example,
upon the utterly alien life of another world or planet with which
human beings cannot possibly have any touch."

True or not, it is nevertheless indisputable that certain authors
have made such use of the imagination as to make the reaUties of this,
our world, seem incredible. Perhaps it is not necessary to visit distant
worlds in order to grasp the essentia] truths of the universe, or to
understand its order and fimctioning. Books which do not belong
to great hterature, books which do not command " the grand style,"
often bring us closer to the mystery of life. They treat of the
fimdamental experience of man, of his " unalterable " human
nature, in quite another way from that of the classical writers. They
speak of this common ftmd which binds us not only to one another
but to God. They speak of man as an integral part of the universe
and not as a " sport of creation." They speak of man as though to
him alone it were given to discover the Creator. They link man's
destiny with the destiny of all creation ; they do not make him a
victim of fate or an " object of redemption." In glorifying man they
glorify the whole universe. They may not speak in the grand manner,
as I have just said. They are less interested in language than in subject
matter, more interested in ideas than in the thoughts which clothe
them. As a consequence, they often appear to be poor writers, they
lend themselves to ridicule and caricature. Nothing is easier to make
sport of than the yearning for the sublime. Often, be it noted, this
yearning is masked or concealed ; often the author himself is not
aware of what he seeks or what he states in veiled fashion.

What is the subject matter of these oft despised books i Briefly,
the web of life and death ; the pursuit of identity through the
drama of identification ; the terrors of initiation ; the lure of
indescribable visions ; the road to acceptance ; the redemption of
the creature world and the transformation of Nature ; the final
loss of memory, in God. Into the texture of such books is woven all
144

"THB days op my IIPB

thac is symbolic and everlasting— not stars and planets but the deeps
between them ; not other worlds and their possibly fantastic in-
habitants but the ladders that reach to them ; not laws and principles
but ever unfolding circles of creation and the hierarchies which
constitute them.

As to the drama which informs these works, it has nothing to do
with the individual versus society, nothing to do with the " conquest
of bread," nor has it even ultimately to do with the conflict between
good and evil. It has to do with freedom. For not a line could have
been written by the men I have in mind if man had ever known
freedom or even what is meant by it. Here truth and freedom are
synonymous. In these works the drama begins only when man
voluntarily opens his eyes. This act, the sole one which may be said
to have heroic significance, displaces all the sound and fury of histori-
cal substance. Outward bound, man is at last able to look inward
with grace and certitude. No longer looking at Ufe from the world
plane, man ceases to be the victim of chance or circumstance : he
" elects "to follow his vision, to become one with the imagination.
From this moment on he begins to travel ; all previous voyages
were but circumnavigation.

The names of these precious books ?
I will answer you in the words of Gurdjieff as given by Ous-
pensky — " If you understood everything you have read in your Ufe,
you would already know what you are looking for now."*

This statement is one to be pondered over again and again. It
reveals the true connection between books and life. It tells one how
to read. It proves — to me, at any rate — something I have reiterated
a number of times, to wit, that the reading of books is for the joy
of corroboration, and that that is the final discovery we make about
books. As for true reading — a procedure which never ends — that
can be done with anything : a blade of grass, a flower, a horse's
hoof, the eyes of a child when smitten v^th wonder or ecstasy,
the mien of a real warrior, the form of a pyramid, or the serene
composure graven on the statue of every Buddha. If the questioning
faculty is not dead, if the sense of wonder is not atrophied, if there
be real hunger and not mere appetite or craving, one cannot help

* In Search of the Miraculous, by P. D. Ouspensky ; Harcourt, Brace & Co.,
Inc., New York, 1949. Routledge & Co., Ltd., London.

145

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

but read as he runs. The \^^ole universe must then become an open
book.

This joyous reading of life or books does not imply the abatement
of the critical faculty. On the contrary. To make full surrender to
author or Author impHes the exaltation of the critical faculty. In
railing against the use of the word " constructive " in connection
with Hterary critidsm, Powys writes thus :

O that word * constructive * ! How, in the name of the
mystery of genius, can criticism be anything else than an
an idolatry, a worship, a metamorphosis, a love affair !*

Ever and again the moving finger points to the inmost self, not in
warning but in love. The handwriting on the wall is neither
mysterious nor menacing to the one who can interpret it. Walls
fall away, and with them our fears and reluctances. But the last
wall to give way is the wall which hems the ego in. Who reads not
with the eyes of the Self reads not at all. The inner eye pierces all
walls, deciphers all scripts, transforms all " messages." It is not a
reading or appraising eye, but an informing eye. It does not receive
light from without, it sheds Ught. light and joy. Through Hght
and joy is the world opened up, revealed for what it is : inefifable
beauty, imending creation.

* Visions and Reuisions, by John Cowpcr Powys ; G. Arnold Shaw,
New York, 191 5.
146

KRISHNAMURTI

Someone has said that ** the world has never known her greatest
men." If we could know their Hves and works we might indeed
have " a biography of God on eardi."

Beside the inspired writings, of which there is an abundance, the
creations of the poets seem pale. First come the gods, then the
heroes (who incarnate the myth), then the seers and prophets, and
then the poets. The concern of the poet is to restore the splendor
and magnificence of the ever reviving past. The poet senses almost
beyond endurance the enormous deprivation which afflicts mankind.
For him " the magic of words " convey something which is totally
lost to the ordinary individual. Ever a prisoner of the realm from
which he springs, his province is one which the ordinary man never
explores and from which he seems debarred by birth. The immorta-
lity which is reserved for the poet is the vindication of his unswerving
allegiance to the Source from which he derives his inspiration.

Listen to Pico della Mirandola : In the midst of the
world, the Creator said to Adam, I have placed thee,
so thou couldst look aroimd so much easier, and see all
that is in it. I created thee as a being neither celestial nor
earthly, neither mortal nor immortal alone, so that thou
shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer ; thou
canst degenerate to animal, and through thyself be reborn
to godlike existence . . .

Is this not the essence and purpose of human existence in a nut-
shell ? In the midst of the world the Creator placed man. The
" anthropocentric " viewpoint, say our sad, learned men. Looking
round and about them they see nothing but dreck. To them Ufe is a
tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing. Indeed, if we follow their
thought to the end, the very substance of our mother, the Earth,
is nothingness. Stripping the cosmos of spirit, they have finally
succeeded in demolishing the very ground on which they take their

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Stand : solid matter. They speak to us through a void of hypothesis
and conjecture. Never will they understand that ** the world is a
generalized form of the spirit, its symboHc picture."* Though they
speak as if " every rock has a tale written on its wrinkled and
weathered face," they refuse to read what is written ; they impose
their own feeble stories of creation upon myths and legends embedded
in truth and reaHty. They reckon in Hght years, with the signs and
symbols of their priesdy caste, but they are alarmed when it is
asserted that a superior order of men, superior orders of civilisation,
flourished as recent as one hundred thousand years ago. Where man
is concerned, the ancients have accorded him a greater antiquity, a
greater inteUigence and understanding, than our men of Httle faith
whose vanity is bolstered by pretentious learning.

All this by way of saying that the books I most enjoy reading arc
those which put me in rapport with the incredible nature of man's
being. Nothing attributed to the power and glory of man is too
much for me to swallow. Nothing which concerns the story of our
earth and the marvels it holds is too preposterous for me. The more
disgusted I grow with what is called " history " the more exalted
my opinion of man becomes. If I am passionate about the Hves of
individual artists, in whatever field, I am still more passionate about
man as a whole. In my brief experience as reader of the written word
I have been given to assist at marvels which surpass all understanding.
Even if these were but the " imaginings " of inspired writers, their
reaUty is in no way impugned. We are this day on the threshold of a
world in which nothing men dare to think or beUeve is impossible of
fruition. (Men have thought the same in certain moments in the past,
but only as in a dream, firom the deeps or the unconscious, as it were.)
We are being told every day, for example, that the prosaic, practical
minds which direct the affairs of certain departments of our govern-
ment are seriously working to perfect the means of reaching the
moon — and even planets more distant — within the next fifty years.
(A very modest estimate ! ) What Hes behind these plans and projects
is another matter. Are ** we " thinking of defending the planet
Earth or of attacking the inhabitants of other planets ? Or are we
thinking of abandoning this abode in which there seems to be no

* Novalis.
148

KRISHNAMURTI

solution to our ills i Be assured, whatever the reason, however
daring our plans, the motive is not a lofty one.

This effort to conquer space is, however, only one of many
heretofore " impossible dreams " which our men of science promise
to explode. The readers of the daily newspaper or of the popular
science magazines can discourse eloquently on these subjects, though
they themselves know next to nothing of the elements of science
which he at the root of these once wild and incredible theories,
plans and projects.

Woven into the Hfe of Nicolas Flamcl is the story of the Book of
Abraham the Jew. The discovery of this book and the effort made
to penetrate the secret it contained is a tale of earthly adventure of the
highest order. " At the same time," says Maurice Magre,* " that he
[Flamel] was learning how to make gold out of any material, he
acquired the wisdom of despising it in his heart." As in any chapter
on the famous alchemists, there is in this one also astounding and, if
we were open-minded, most illuminating statements. I wish to
quote just one paragraph, if for no other reason than to suggest the
reverse of what I insinuated above. The passage concerns two
eminent alchemists of the Seventeenth Century ; the reader may, if
he likes, choose to regard them as " exceptions."

It is probable that they attained the most highly
developed state possible to man, that they accompUshed
the transmutation of their soul. While still Uving they
were members of the spiritual world. They had regenerated
their being, performed the task of man. They were twice
bom. They devoted themselves to helping their fellow-
men ; this they did in the most useful way, which does
not consist in healing the ills of the body or in improving
men's physical state. They used a higher method, which
in the first instance can be applied only to a small number,
but eventually affects all. They helped the noblest minds
to reach the goal which they had reached themselves.
They sought such men in the towns through which they
passed, and, generally, during their travels. They had
no school and no regular teaching, because their teaching
was on the border of the human and the divine. But they
knew that a word sown at a certain time in a certain soul

* Magicians, Seers and Mystics, by Maurice Magre ; E. P. Dutton & Co.
New York, 1932.

149

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

would bring results a thousand times greater than those
which could accrue from the knowledge gained through
books or ordinary science.

The marvels I speak of are of all sorts. Sometimes they are just
thoughts or ideas ; sometimes they arc extraordinary beUefe or
practices ; sometimes they are in the nature of physical quests ;
sometimes they arc sheer feats of language ; sometimes they are
systems ; sometimes they are discoveries or inventions ; sometimes
they are the record of miraculous events ; sometimes they arc the
embodiments of wisdom, the source of which is suspect ; sometimes
they are accounts of fanaticism, persecution and intolerance ; some-
times they take the form of Utopias ; sometimes they arc super-
human feats of heroism ; sometimes they are deeds, or things, of
unbehevable beauty ; sometimes they arc chronicles of all that is
monstrous, evil and perverted.

To give an inkling of what I have in mind I am stringing together
pell-mell a series of touchstones : Joachim of Floris, Gilles de Rais,
Jacob Bochme, the Marquis de Sade, the I-Ching, the PiJace of
Knossos, the Albigensians, Jean-Paul Richter, the Holy Grail,
Heinrich ScUiemann, Joan of Arc, the Count of St. Germain, the
Summa Theologica the great Uighur Empire, ApoUonius of Tyana,
Madame Blavatsky, St. Francis of Assisi, the legend of Gilgamesh,
Ramakrishna, Timbuctoo, the Pyramids, Zen Buddhism, Easter
Island, the great Cathedrals, Nostradamus, Paracelsus, the Holy
Bible, Atlantis and Mu, Thermopylae, Akhnaton, Cuzco, The
Children's Crusade, Tristan and Isolt, Ur, the Inquisition, Arabia
Deserta, King Solomon, the Black Death, Pythagoras, Santos
Dumont, Alice in Wonderland, the Naacal Library, Hermes Trisme-
gistus, the White Brotherhood, the atom bomb, Gautama the
Buddha.

There is a name I have withheld which stands out in contrast
to all that is secrer, suspect, confusing, bookish and enslaving :
Krishnamurti. Here is one man of our time who may be said to be
a master of reaUty. He stands alone. He has renounced more than
any man I can think of, except the Christ. Fundamentally he is so
simple to understand that it is easy to comprehend the confusion
which his clear, direct words and deeds have entailed. Men are
reluctant to .iccept what is easy to grasp. Out of a perversity deeper
150

KRISHNAMURTl

than all Satan's wiles, man refuses to acknowledge his own God-given
rights : he demands deliverance or salvation by and through an
intermediary ; he seeks guides, counsellors, leaders, systems, rituals.
He looks for solutions which are in his own breast. He puts learning
above wisdom, power above the art of discrimination. But above
all, he refuses to work for his own liberation, pretending that first
" the world " must be Hberated. Yet, as Krishnamurti has pointed
out time and again, the world problem is bound up with the problem
of the individual. Truth is ever present. Eternity is here and now.
And salvation ? What is it, O man, that you wish to save i Your
petty ego ? Your soul ? Your identity ? Lose it and you will find
yourself. Do not worry about God — God knows how to take care
of Himself. Cultivate your doubts, embrace every kind of exper-
ience, keep on desiring, strive neither to forget nor to remember,
but assimilate and integrate what you have experienced.

Roughly, this is Krishnamurti's way of speaking. It must be
revoltiug at times to answer all the petty, stupid questions which
people are forever putting to him. Emancipate yourself ! he urges.
No one else will, because no one else can. This voice fiom the
wilderness is, of course, the voice of a leader. But Krishnamurti
has renounced that rdle too.

It was Carlo Suar^* book on Krishnamurti* which opened my
eyes to this phenomenon in our midst. I first read it in Paris and since
then have reread it several times. There is hardly another book I
have read so intently, marked so copiously, unless it be The Absolute
Collective. After years of struggle and search I found gold.

I do not beUeve this book has been translated into English, nor
do I know, moreover, what Krishnamurti himself thinks of it. I
have never met Krishnamurti, though there is no man Uving whom
I would consider it a greater privilege to meet than he. His place of
residence, curiously enough, is not so very far from my own.
However, it seems to me that if this man stands for anything it is
for the right to lead his own life, which is surely not to be at the
beck and call of every Tom, Dick and Harry who wishes to make
his acquaintance or obtain from him a few crumbs of wisdom.

* Krishnatnurti ; Editions Adyar, Paris, 1932. This work has now been
replaced by another, entitled Krishnamurti et Vuniti humaine ; Lc Ccrclc du
Livre, Paris, 1950.

151

THE BOOKS IN MT LIFE

" You can never know me," he says somewhere. It is enough to
know what he represents, what he stands for in being and essence.

This book by Carlo Suar^ is invaluable. It is replete with
Krishnamurti*s own words culled from speeches and writings. Every
phase of the latter's development (up to the year the book was
published) is set forth — ^and lucidly, cogently, trenchantly. Suarb
discreetly keeps in the background. He has the wisdom to let
Krishnamurti speak for himself.

In pages ii 6 to 119 of Suar^* book the reader may find for himself
the text of which I herewith give the substance . . .

After a long discussion with a man in Bombay, the latter says to
Krishnamurti : What you speak of could lead to the creation of
supermen, men capable of governing themselves, of establishing
order in themselves, men who would be their own masters absolute.
But what about the man at the bottom of the ladder, who depends
on external authority, who makes use of all kinds of crutches, who is
obHged to submit to a moral code which may, in reahty, not suit
him I

Krishnamurti answers : See what happens in the world. The
strong, the violent, the powerfiil ones, the men who usurp and
wield power over others, are at the top ; at the bottom are the
weak and gentle ones, who struggle and flounder. By contrast
think of the tree, whose strength and glory derives from its deep
and hidden roots ; in the case of the tree the top is crowned by
delicate leaves, tender shoots, the most fragile branches. In human
society, at least as it is constituted today, the strong and the powerful
are supported by the weak. In Nature, on the other hand, it is the
strong and the powerfixl who support the weak. As long as you
persist in viewing each problem with a perverted, twisted mind you
will accept the actual state of aflfain. I look at the problem from
another point of view . . . Because your convictions are not the
result of your own understanding you repeat what is given by author-
ities ; you amass citations, you pit one authority against another, the
andent against the new. To that I have nothing to say. But if you
envisage Hfe from a standpoint which is not deformed or mutilated
by authority, not bolstered by others* knowledge, but from one
which springs from your own sufferings, from your thought, your
culture, your understanding, your love, then you will understand what
152

KRISBNAMURTI

I say — ** car la meditation du coeur est rentendement "... Per-
sonally, and I hope you will understand what I say now, I have no
belief and I belong to no tradition.* I have always had this attitude
towards life. It being a fact that life varies from day to day, not only
arc behefs and traditions useless to me, but, if I were to let myself
be enchained by them, they would prevent me from understanding
life . . . You may attain Hberation, no matter where you are or
what the drcmnstances surrounding you, but this means that you
must have the strength of genius. For genius is, after all, the abiHty
to dehver oneself from the circumstances in which one is enmeshed,
the abiHty to free oneself from the vicious circle . . . You may say
to me — I have not that kind of strength. That is my point of view
exactly. In order to discover your own strength, the power which is
in yoUf you must be ready and willing to come to grips with every
kind of experience. And that is just what you refuse to do !

This sort of language is naked, revelatory and inspiring. It pierces
the clouds of philosophy which confoimd our thought and restores
the springs of action. It levels the tottering supentructures of the
verbal gymnasts and clears the ground of rubbish. Instead of an
obstacle race or a rat trap, it makes of daily life a joyous pursuit.
In a conversation with his brother Theo, Van Gogh once said :
" Christ was so infinitely great because no furniture or any other
stupid accessories ever stood in his way." One feels the same way
about Krishnamurti. Nothing stands in his way. His career, unique in
the history of spiritual leaders, reminds one of the famous Gilgamesh
epic. Hailed in his youth as the coming Savior, Krishnamurti
renounced the r6le that was prepared for him, spumed all disciples,
rejected all mentors and preceptors. He initiated no new faith or
dogma, questioned everything, cultivated doubt (especially in
moments of exaltation), and, by dint of heroic struggle and persever-
ance, freed himself of illusion and enchantment, of pride, vanity, and
every subtle form of dominion over others. He went to the very
source of Hfe for sustenance and inspiration. To resist the wiles and
snares of those who sought to enslave and exploit him demanded
eternal vigilance. He Uberated his soul, so to say, firom the under-
world and the overworld, thus opening to it ** the paradise of heroes."

Is it necessary to define this state i

* Italics mine.

153

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFfi

There is something about Krishnamurti's utterances which
makes the reading of books seem utterly superfluous. There is
ako another, even more striking, fact connected with his utterances,
as Suarh aptly points out, namely, that "the clearer his words
the less his message is understood."

Krishnamurti once said : " I am going to be vague expressly ;
I could be altogether expUdt, but it is not my intention to be so.
For, once a thing is defined, it is dead "... No, Krishnamurti
does not define, neither docs he answer Yes or No. He throws
the questioner back upon himself, forces him to seek the answer
in himself. Over and over he repeats : ** I do not ask you to believe
what I say ... I desire nothing of you, neither your good opinion,
your agreement, nor that you follow me. I ask you not to believe
but to understand what I say." Collaborate with life ! — that is what
he is constantly urging. Now and then it is a veritable lashing
he inflicts — upon the self-righteous. What, he asks, have you
accomplished with all your fine words, your slogans and labels,
your books ? How many individuals have you made happy, not
in a transitory but in a lasting sense i And so on. '* It's a great
satisfaction to give oneself titles, names, to isolate oneself fi:om
the world and think oneself different firom others ! But, if all that
you say is true, have you saved a single fcUow creature from sorrow
and pain ? "

All the protective devices — social, moral, religious — ^which give
the illusion of sustaining and aiding the weak so that they may
be guided and conducted towards a better hfe, are precisely what
prevent the weak firom profiting by direct experience of life.
Instead of naked and immediate experience, men seek to make
use of protections and thus are mutilated. These devices become
the instruments of power, of material and spiritual exploitation.
(Suar^* own interpretation.)

One of the salient differences between a man like Krishnamurti
and artists in general lies in their respective attitudes towards their
roles. Krishnamurti points out that there is a constant opposition
between the creative genius of the artist and his ego. The artist
imagines, he says, that it is his ego which is great or sublime. This
ego wishes to utilize £ot its own profit and aggrandizement the
moment of inspiration wherein it was in touch with the eternal,
154

KRISHNA MURTI

a moment, precisely, in which the ego was absent, replaced by
the residue of its own living experience. It is one's intuition, he
maintains, which should be the sole guide. As for poets, musicians,
all artists, indeed, they should develop anonymity, should become
detached from their creations. But for most artists it is just the
contrary — they want to see their signatures attached to their
creations. In short, as long as the artist clings to individualism,
he will never succeed in rendering his inspiration or his creative
power permanent. The quality or condition of genius is but the
first phase of deliverance.

I am not a translator ; I have had difficulty transcribing and
condensing the foregoing observations and reflections. Nor am
I attempting to give the whole of Krishnamurti's thought as revealed
in Carlo Suar^' book. I was led to speak of him because of the
fact that, however soUdly Krishnamurti may be anchored in reality,
he has unwittingly created for himself a myth and a legend. People
simply will not recognize that a man who has made himself, simple,
forthright and truthful is not concealing something much more
complex, much more mysterious. Pretending that what they
most ardently wish is to extricate themselves from the cruel difficul-
ties in which they find themselves, what they really adore is to
make everything difficult, obscure and capable of realization only
in a distant fiiture. That their difficulties are of their own making
is the last thing they will admit usually. Reality, if for one moment
they allow themselves to be persuaded it exists — in everyday Ufe —
is always referred to as ** harsh ** reaHty. It is spoken of as that
which stands opposed to divine reality, or, we might say, a soft,
hidden paradise. The hope that we may one day awaken to a
condition of Hfe utterly different from that which we experience
daily makes men willing victims of every form of tyranny and
suppression. Man is stultified by hope and fear. The myth which
he lives from day to day is the myth that he may one day escape
from the prison which he has created for himself and which he
attributes to the machinations of othen. Every true hero has made
reaHty his own. In liberating himself, the hero explodes the myth
which binds us to past and fiiture. This is the very essence of myth
— ^that it veils the wondrous here and now.

This morning I discovered on the shelf another book on Krish-

?55

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

namurd which I had forgotten that I possessed. It had been given
to me by a fiiend on the eve of a long journey. I had put the book
away without ever opening it. This preamble is to thank my friend
for the great service he has rendered me — and to inform the reader
who does not know French of another excellent interpretation of
Krishnamurti's life and work. The book is called Krishnamurti
(** Man is his own Hberator **), by Ludowic R^ault.* Like the
Suar^ book, it too contains abundant citations from Krishnamurti's
speeches and writings. The author, now dead, was a member of
the Theosophical Society, "whose tendencies," he states in the
preface, " I am far from approving, but to whose grand tenets of
Evolution, Reincarnation and Karma I heartily subscribe." And
then there comes this statement : " I wish to inform my readers
that I am not for Krishnamurti, I am with him."

Since I know of no Uving man whose thought is more inspiring
and fecundating, since I know of no living man who is more free
of opinion and prejudice, and, because I find from penonal experience
that he is constantly being misquoted, misinterpreted, misunder-
stood, I regard it as important and opportune, even at the risk of
boring the reader, to linger longer on the subject of Krishnamurti.
In Paris, where I first heard of him, I had a number of .friends who
were forever talking about " the Masters." None of them, to my
knowledge, were members of any group, cult or sect. They were
just earnest seekers after the truth, as we say. And they were all
artists. The books which they were reading were at that time
unfamiliar to me — ^I mean the works of Leadbeater, Steiner, Besant,
Blavatsky, Mabel Collins and such like. Indeed, hearing them
quote from these sources, I often laughed in their faces. (To this
day, I must confess, Rudolf Steiner's language still excites my
sense of ridicule.) In the heat of argument I was now and then
termed " a spiritual bum." Because I have not the makings of
a " follower," these friends, all ardent souls, all consumed by a
desire to convert, regarded me as " their meat." In anger, some-
times, I would teD them never to come near me again — unless
they could talk about other things. But the morrow would find
them at my door, as if nothing had happened.

The one quaHty which they had in common, I must say

* Christopher Publishing House, Boston, 1939,
156

KRISHNAMURTI

immediately, was their utter helplessness. They were out to save
me, but they could not save themselves. Here I must confess that
later on, what they talked about, what they quoted from the books,
what they were striving with might and main to make known to
me, was not as silly and preposterous as I once thought. Not by
any means ! But what prevented me from ** seeing things in the
right light'* was, as I say, their peculiar inability to profit from
this vdsdom they were so eager to impart. I was merciless with
them, something I have never regretted. I think it may have done
some good to remain as adamant as I did. It was only after they
ceased bothering me that I was truly able to become interested
in ** all this nonsense." (Should any of them happen to read these
lines they will know that, despite everything, I am indebted to
them.) But the truth remains that they were doing exactly what
'* the Masters " discountenanced. " It is of no value," says Krish-
namurti, " who is speaking, the value Hes in the fiill significance
of what is said." Naturally, to understand the fiill significance
of what is said, to make it one's own, depends entirely on the
individual. I recall an English teacher in school who was forever
shouting at us : ** Make it your own ! " He was a vain, pretentious
coxcomb, a real jackass, if ever there was one. Had he made one
little thing of all that he had read and pompously recommended
to us " his own " he would not have been teaching English litera-
ture : he would have been writing it, or assmning that he was
truly humble, he would, as teacher, mentor, guide and what not,
have inspired in us a love of Hterature — which he most certainly
did not !

But to come back to " the Masters "... In the International Star
Bulletin of November, 1929, Krishnamurti is quoted thus : ** You
are all immensely interested in the Masters, whether they exist or
not, and what my view is with regard to them. I will tell you my
view. To me it is of very Uttle importance whether they exist or
whether they do not exist, because when you have to walk to the
camp or to the station from here, there are people ahead of you,
nearer the station, people who have started earlier. What is more
important — to get to the station or to sit down and worship the
man who is ahead of you ? "

In his book on Krishnamurti, R^hault points out that Krish-

J57

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

namurti's attitude towards, or vision of, the Masters never altered
essentially. What had changed was " his outlook on those who
seek the Masters and invoke them in season and out with a ridiculous
and unseemly familiarity." He quotes an earUer statement (1925)
of Krishnamurti's : ** We all beUeve that the Masters exist, that
they are somewhere, and are concerned about us ; but this belief
is not living enough, not real enough, to make us change. The
goal of evolution is to make us Uke the Masters who arc the
apotheosis, the perfection of humanity. As I have said, the Masten
are a reality. For me at least they are one."

The tremendous consistency between these apparently clashing
references to the Masters is typical of Krishnamurti's ever evolving
attitude towards life. His shift of emphasis from 'the fact of the
Masters* existence to the purpose of their existence is a demonstra-
tion of his vigilance, alertness and indefatigable efforts to icomc
to grips with essentials.

Why do you bother about the Masters ? The essential
is that you should be free and strong, and you can never
be free and strong if you are a pupil of another, if you
have gurus, mediators, Masters over you. You cannot be
free and strong if you make me your Master, your guru.
I don't want that . . .

Only a few months after making this definitive, unequivocal
statement (April, 1930), badgered again for an answer to the
question " Do Adepts, Masters exist i " he replies : " It is unessen-
tial to me. I am not concerned with it ... I am not trying to
evade the question ... I do not deny that they exist. In evolution
there must be a difference between the savage and the most cul-
tured. But what value has it to the man who is held in the walls
of a prison ? . . . I should be foolish to deny the gamut of
experience which is what you call evolution. You care more about
the man who is ahead of you than about yourself You are willing
to worship someone far away, not yourself or your neighbor.
There may be Adepts, Masters, I do not deny it, but I cannot
understand what value it has to you as an individual."

A few years later he is reported as saying : " Do not desire
happiness. Do not seek truth. Do not seek the ultimate." Except
to quibblers and falsifiers, there is no variance here from the eternal
158

KRISHN AMURTI

issue which he has marked out. " You seek truth/* he says again,
" as if it were the opposite of what you are."

If such clear, forthright words do not incite and awaken, nothing
will.

** Man is his own liberator ! " Is this not the ultimate teaching ?
It has been said again and again, and it has been proved again and
again by great world figures. Masters ? Undoubtedly. Men who
espoused life, not principles, laws, dogmas, morals, creeds. " Really
great teachers do not lay down laws, they want to set man free."
(ICrishnamurti.)

What distinguishes Krishnamurti, even from the great teachers
of the past, the masters and the exemplars, is his absolute nakedness.
The one r61e he permits himself to play is — ^himself, a human
being. Clad only in the frailty of the flesh, he reHes entirely upon
the spirit, which is one with the flesh. If he has a mission it is to
strip men of their illusions and delusions, to knock away the false
supports of ideals, beliefe, fetishes, every kind of crutch, and thus
render back to man the full majesty, the full potency, of his
humanity. He has often been referred to as " the World Teacher."
If any man Uving merits the title, he does. But to me the important
thing about Krishnamurti is that he imposes himself upon us not
as a teacher, nor even as a Master, but as a man.

Find out for yourself, he says, what are the possessions
and ideals that you do not desire. By knowing what you
do not want, by elimination, you will unburden the mind,
and only then will it understand the essential which is
ever there.

159

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

" When you're ready, Gristvold, fire ! "*

I THINK it was in the book called With Dewey at Manila Bay,
which I spoke of earlier and which, if my memory serves me
right, appeared about the same time that the Spanish-American
War ended (the poor Spaniards, they never had a chance !) : I
think it was right out of Dewey's mouth — or could it have been
Admiral Sampson's i — that this command sprang, to stay with
me until I go to the grave. An idiotic thing to remember, but,
like that other one — " Wait until you see the whites of their eyes !"
— ^it remains. Of course a great deal more remains (of the reading
of a book) than what the memory releases. But it remains eternally
curious what one person remembers and another forgets.

The remains ... As if wc were talking of cadavers !

I awoke the other morning, my mind still in a whirl &om the
continuous cflfort to recall titles, authors, names of places, events
and the most seemingly insignificant data, and what do you suppose
I found myself dwelling on i The Plains of Abraham ! Yes, my
mind was foil of Montcalm and Wolfe fighting it out up there
towards the roof of the world. The French and Indian War, I
behcve we call it. Seven long years of fighting. It was probably
this battle on the Plains of Abraham, which my weak memory
places somewhere in the vidnity of Quebec, that decided the fate
of the French in North America. I must have studied this bloody
war in detail, in school. In fact, I'm sure I did. And what remains i
The Plains of Abraham, To be more accurate, more precise, it boils
down to a clump of images which could be put in the hollow of
a shell. I sec Montcalm dying — or was it Wolfe ? — ^in the open
air, surrounded by his bodyguard and a cluster of Indians with

* According to Gregory Mason, author of Remember the Maine, Dewey's
words were : *' You may fire when ready, Gridley."

l6o

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

bald knobs from which a few feathers protrude, long feathers,
buried deep in the scalp. Eagles* feathers probably. Montcalm
is making a dying speech, one of those historic ** last words," such
as — "I regret that I have but one Hfe to give for my country."
I no longer remember his words but it seems to me he was saying
— " The tide is going against us." What matter, anyway ? In a
few moments he will be dead, a thing of history. And Canada,
except for the Eastern sHver, will be EngUsh — worse luck for us !
But how is it that I visualize a huge bird perched on his shoulder i
Whence that bird of ill omen ? Perhaps it is the same bird which
got caught in the netting over the cradle in which lay the infant
James Ensor, the bird which haunted him all his Hfe. There it is,
at any rate, large as Hfe and dominating the infinitude of back-
ground in my imaginary picture. For some obscure reason the site
of this famous battleground makes a woeful impression upon me :
the sky seems to press down on it with all its impalpable weight.
Not much space there between land and sky. The heads of the
brave warriors seem to brush the cloudless vault of heaven. The
battle over, the French will descend the steep face of the promon-
tory by rope ladder. They will take to the rapids in canoes, a handful
at a time, the EngHsh above raking them mercilessly with grape-
shot. As for Montcalm, being a nobleman by birth, and a general,
his remains will be removed from the scene with all the honors of
war. Night falls rapidly, leaving the helpless Indians to look out
for themselves. The British, now having a clear field, romp all
over Canada. With stakes and cord the border is marked out.
" We " have nothing to fear any more : our neighbors arc our
own kith and kin . . .

If this battle isn't included in the fifteen decisive batdes of the
world it should be. Anyway, I could think of nothing this morning
I speak of but batdes and battlefields. There was Teddy, at the
head of his Rough Riders, storming San Juan Hill ; there was
poor old Morro Casde being pounded to bits by our heavy guns,
and the chain which locked the Spanish fleet in just a rusty old
iron chain. Yes, and there was Aguinaldo leading his rebel forces
(Igorotes largely) through the swamps and jungles of Mindanao,
a price upon his head. With Admirals Dewey and Sampson goes
Admiral Schley, who remains in my memory as a kindly, sensible

161

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

sort of man, not too bloodthirsty, not too great a strategist, but
"just right." The opposite extreme from John Brown the Liberator,
man of Ossawatomie and Harper's Ferry, the man who attributed
his grand fiasco to the fact that he had been too considerate of
the enemy. A chivalrous fanatic, John Brown. One of the brightest
stars in. the whole firmament of our brief history. Our nearest of
kin to the incomparable Saladin. [Saladin I All during the last
war I thought of Saladin. What a gracious prince, compared to
the " butchers " on both sides in this last war ! How is it we have
forgotten all about him ?) Imagine, if we had two men of the
cahbre of John Brown and Saladin fighting the corruption of the
world ! Would we need more ? John Brown swore that with
the right men — two hundred would be enough, he said — ^he could
lick the whole United States. He wasn't far firom the mark, either,
when he made that boast.

Yes, thinking of the lofty, solenin ground of the Plains'of Abraham,
I got to thinking of another battleground : Platea. This last I
saw with my own eyes. But at the time I forgot that it was there
the Greeks had put to the sword over three hundred thousand
Persians. A considerable number, for those times ! As I recall
the spot, it was perfect for " mass slaughter." When I came upon
it, from Thebes, the level ground was sown with wheat, barley,
oats. From a distance it resembled a huge game board. In the
dead center, as in the Chinese game of chess, the king was pinned.
Technically the game was over. But then followed the slaughter
— comme d'hahitude. What would war be without slaughter »

Places of slaughter I My mind roamed afield. I recalled our own
War Between the States, now known as the Civil War. Some of
these terrible scenes of '/)attle I had visited ; 'some I knew by heart,
having heard and read about them so often. Yes, there was Bull
Run, Manassas, the Batrle of the Wilderness, Shiloh, Missionary
Ridge, Antietam, Appoiiatox Court House, and of course —
Gettysburg. Pickett's charge : the maddest, most suicidal charge
in history. So one is always told. The Yankees cheering the Rebels
for their courage. And waiting (as always) until ** we " came
just a Uttle closer, until they could see the whites of " our " eyes.
I thought of the Charge of the Light Brigade—" On rode the six
hundred ! " (To the tune of forty-nine verses and everlasting death.)
162

THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

I thought of Verdun, the Germans climbing over their own dead
piled man high and higher. Marching in full regalia, in strict order,
as if on parade. The General Staff not caring how many men it
took to capture Verdun, but never capturing it. Another " strategic
error," as they say so gUbly in books on mihtary tactics. What
a price we have paid for these errors ! All history now. Nothing
accomplished, nothing gained, nothing learned. Just blunders.
And wholesale death. Only generals and generaUssimos are per-
mitted to make such horrible " mistakes." Still, we keep turning them
out. Never tire of making new generals, new admirals — or new wars.
" Fresh wars," we say. I often wonder what is " fresh " about war.
If you wonder sometimes why some of our celebrated con-
temporaries are unable to sleep, or sleep fitfiilly, just revive some
of these bloody battles. Try to imagine yourself back in the trenches
or clinging to an overturned man-of-war ; try to picture the ** dirty
Japs " coming out of their hiding places aflame from head to foot ;
try to recall the bayonet exercises, first with stuffed sacks and then
with the soft resistant flesh of the enemy, who is au fond your
brother in the flesh. Think of all the foul words in all the tongues
of Babel, and when you have mouthed them all, ask yourself if
in the thick of it you were able to summon a single word capable
of conveying what you were experiencing. One can read The
Red Laugh, The Red Badge of Courage, Men in War or J'ai Tue^
and in the reading of them derive a certain aesthetic enjoyment —
despite the horripilating nature of these books. This is one of the
strange, strange things about the written word, that you can live
the dread thing in your mind and not only not go mad but feel
somewhat exhilarated, often healed. Andreyev, Crane, Latzko,
Cendrars — these men were artists as well as murderers. Somehow,
I can never think of a general as an artist. (An admiral possibly,
but a general never.) For me a general must have the hide of a
rhinoceros, otherwise he would be nothing more than an adjutant
or a commissary sergeant. . . . Pierre Loti, was he not an officer
in the French Navy ? Strange that he should pop into my head.
But the Navy, as I said, offers one a thin chance of preserving the
httle humanity which is left us. Loti, in the image which is pre-
served from youthful readings, seems so cultured, so refined —
a bit of a gymnast also, if I remember rightly. How could he

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possibly kill t To be sure, there wasn't much guts in his writings.
But he left one book which I cannot put aside as mere romantic
balderdash, though possibly it is : I mean Disenchanted. (To think
that just the other day a Dominican monk, who came to visit me,
had met in the flesh the ** heroine ** of this tender romance !)
Anyway, with Pierre Loti goes Claude Farr^re, both relics now,
like the Monitor and the Merrimac.

Thinking of Thermopylae, Marathon, Salamis, I recall an illustra-
tion in a juvenile book I read long ago. It was a picture of the
brave Spartans, supposedly on the eve of their last stand, combing
their long hair. They knew they would die to the last man, yet
(or because of this fact) they were combing their hair. The long
strands fell to the waist — and they were plaited, I believe. This,
in my childish mind, gave them an effeminate appearance. The
impression remains. On my expedition through the Peloponncsos,
with Katsimbalis (the " Colossus ") I was dumbfounded to learn
that not one poet, artist or scientist had come out of the Pelopon-
nesos. Only warriors, lawgivers, athletes — and obedient clods.

Thucydides* History of the Peloponnesian War is admittedly a
masterpiece. It is a book I have never been able to finish, but I
esteem it nevertheless. It is one of those books which should be
read with attention at this moment in history. " Thucydides is
pointing out what war is, why it comes to pass, what it does, and,
imless men learn better ways, must continue to do."*

Twenty-seven years of war — and nothing accomplished, nothing
gained. (Except the usual destruction.)

The Athenians and the Spartans fought for one reason
only — ^because they were powerful, and therefore were
compelled (the words are Thucydides* own) to seek more
power. They fought not because they were different —
democratic Athens and oligarchical Sparta — but because
they were alike. The war had nothing to do with dif-
ferences in ideas or with considerations of right and wrong.
Is democracy right and the rule of the few over the many
wrong ? To Thucydides the question would have seemed
an evasion of the issue. There was no right power. Power,
whoever wielded it, was evil, the corrupter of men. f

* The Great Age of Greek Literature, by Edith Hamilton ; W. W. Norton,
New York, 1942.
tTbid.

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THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

In the Opinion of this author, " Thucydides was the first probably
to see, certainly to put into words, this new doctrine which was
to become the avowed doctrine of the world." The doctrine,
namely, that in power poUtics it is not only necessary, but right, for
the state to seize every opportunity for self-advantage.

As for Sparta, how modem is the description of this State seen
through Plutarch's eyes :

In Sparta, the citizens* way of Ufe was fixed. In general,
they had neither the wi\l nor the abiHty to lead a private
life. They were hke a community of bees, clinging
together around the leader and in an ecstasy of enthusiasm
and selfless ambition belonging wholly to their country.

When you re ready ^ Griswotd, fire !

Three thousand, five thousand, ten thousand years of history
— and the readiness and ability to make war is still the supreme
annihilating day-to-day fact of our Uves. We have not advanced
a step, despite all the sound, irrefutable, analytical treatises and
diatribes on the subject. Almost as soon as we are able to read,
the history of our glorious country is put in our hands. It is a story
written in bloodshed, telling of lust, greed, hatred, envy, per-
secution, intolerance, theft, murder and degradation. As children
we thrill to read of the massacre of the Indians, the persecution of
the Mormons, the crushing defeat of the rebellious South. Our
first heroes are soldiers, usuaXiy generals, of course. To the Northerner,
Lincoln is almost a Christ-Hke figure. To the Southerner, Robert E.
Lee is the embodiment of grace, chivalry, valor and wisdom.
Both men led their followers to slaughter. Both fought for the
right. The Negro, who was the cause of the trouble, is still a slave
and a pariah.

" Everything we are taught is false," said Rimbaud. As always,
he meant Hterally everything. As soon as one begins to look deeply
into any subject one realizes how very Uttle is known, how very,
very much is conjecture, hypothesis, surmise and speculation.
Wherever one penetrates profoundly one is confronted by the
triple-headed spectre of prejudice, supentition, authority. When
it comes to vital instruction, almost everything that has been written
for our edification can be junked.

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As we grow older we learn how to read the myths, fables and
legends which entranced us in childhood. We read biography
more and more — and the philosophy of history rather than history
itself. We care less and less for facts, more and more for pure flights
of the imagination and intuitive apprehension of the truth. We
discover that the poet, whatever his medium, is the only true
inventor. Into this single type are merged all the heroes we at
one time or another worshipped. We observe that man's only
real enemy is fear, and that all imaginative acts (all heroism) are
inspired by the desire and the unflinching resolve to conquer fear
— ^in whatever form it manifests itself The hero-as-poet epitomizes
the inventor, the pioneer, the pathfinder, the truth seeker. He
it is who slays the dragon and opens the gates of paradise. That
we persist in situating this paradise in a beyond is not the fault of
the poet. The same beUef and worship which inspire the vast
majority are mirrored by an inner absence of faith and reverence.
The poet-as-hero inhabits reaHty : he seeks to establish this reaHty
for all mankind. The purgatorial condition which prevails on earth
is the caricature of the one and only reaUty ; and it is because the
poet-hero refuses to acknowledge any but the true reaHty that he
is always slain, always sacrificed.

I said a moment ago that our first heroes are soldiers. In a large
sense this is true. True, if we mean by " soldier " one who acts
on his own authority, one who fights for the good, the beautiful
and the true in obedience to the dictates of his own conscience.
In this sense even the gentle Jesus could be called ** a good soldier."
So could Socrates and other great figures whom we never think
of as soldiers. The great pacifists must then be ranked as mighty
soldiers. But this conception of the soldier derives from attributes
formerly reserved for the hero. The only good soldier, strictly
speaking, is the hero. The rest are tin soldiers. What is the hero
then i The incarnation of man " in his frailty " battling against
insuperable odds. To be more exact, this is a residual impression
lefi; us through the heroic legends. When we examine the Hves of
that order of heroes known as saints and sages, we perceive very
clearly that the odds are not insuperable, that the enemy is not
society, that the gods are not against man, and, what is more
important, we perceive that the reaUty which the latter strive to
i66

THE PLAINS OP ABRAHAM

assert, establish and maintain is not at all a wishful rcaHty but one
which is ever present, only hidden by man's wilful blindness.

Before we come to adore such a figure as Pichard the Lion-
Hearted we have already been enthralled and subjugated by the
more subHme figure of King Arthur. Before we come to the great
Crusader we have had for company, in our rarest moments, the
very real, very vivid personages known as Jason, Theseus, Ulysses,
Sinbad, Aladdin, and such like. We are already famiHar with
historical figures such as the great King David, Joseph in Egypt,
Daniel who braved the lions' den, and with lesser figures such as
Robin Hood, Daniel Boone, Pocahontas. Or we may have fallen
under the spell of purely Hterary creations, such as Robinson
Crusoe, GulHver, or AUce — for AHce, too, was in quest of reaUty and
proved her courage poetically by stepping through the looking glass.
Whatever their provenance, all these early spellbinders were
also " spacebinders." Even some of the historical figures seem to
possess the faculty of dominating time and space. All were sustained
and fortified by miraculous powers which they either wrested from
the gods or developed through the cultivation of native ingenuity,
cunning or faith. The moral underlying most of these stories is
that man is really free, that he only begins to use his God-given
powers when the beUef that he possesses them becomes unshakable.
Ingenuity and cunning appear again and again as basic quaHties
of the intellect. Perhaps it is only one Uttle trick which the hero
is given to know, but it more than suffices for all he does not know,
never will know, never need know. The meaning is obvious.
To jump clear of the clockwork we must employ whatever means
are in our possession. It is not enough to beUeve or to know : we
must act. And I mean act, not activity. (The ** acts " of the Apostles,
for example.) The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero
acts. An immense difference.

Yes, long before we are filled with adoration for the incarnations
of courage and stout-heartedness we have been impregnated with
the spirit of more sublime types, men in whom intellect, heart and
soul were welded in triumphant unison. And how can we overlook,
in mentioning these truly masculine figures, the regal types of
womanhood that were attracted to them i Only back in this dim
past do we seem to find women who are the equal and counter-

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part of the great in spirit. What disillusionment awaits us as we
advance into history and biography I

Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon — can we compare these conquerors
with men like King David, the great King Arthur, or Saladin i
How fortunate we are to taste the supernatural and the supra-sensual
at the threshold of our institutional Hfe ! That terrible episode in
European history, known as the Children's Crusade, is it not being
enacted over and over by those whom we bring into the world
without thought or concern for their true welfare i Almost from
the start our children abandon us in favor of the true guides, the
true leaders, the true heroes. They know instinctively that we are
their jailers, their tyrannical masters, from whom they must flee
at the earhest moment or else slay us aHve. " Little primitives," wc
call them some times. Yes, but one might also say — " Httle saints,"
" Httle wizards," " Uttle warriors." Or, tout court — " little martyrs."

" Everything we are taught is false." Yes, but that is not all. For
not beHeving " their " falsehoods we are relentlessly and mercilessly
punished ; for not accepting " their " vile surrogates we arc
humiHated, insulted and injured ; for struggling to free ourselves
from " their " strangling clutches we are shackled and manacled.
O, the tragedies that are enacted daily in every home ! We beg to
fly, and they tell us that only angels have vdngs. We beg to offer
ourselves on the altar of truth, and they tell us that Christ is the
truth, the way and the life. And if, accepting Him, demanding to
follow Him Hterally and to the bitter end, we are laughed and
jeered at. At every turn fresh confusion is heaped upon us. Wc
know not where we stand nor why we should act thus instead
of so. For us the question why is ever evaded. Ours to obey, not
to ask the reason why. We begin in chains and we end in chains.
Stones for bread, logarithms for answers. In despair we turn to
books, confide in authors, take refuge in dreams.

Do not consult me, O miserable parents ! Do not beseech my
aid, O forlorn and abandoned youths ! I know you are suffering.
I know how you suffer and why you suffer. It has been thus since
the beginning of time, or at least since we know anything about
man. There is no redress. Even to be creative is but alleviation and
paUiation. One must free himself unaided. " To become as little
children." Every one bows his head in silence when this utterance
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THE PLAINS OF ABRAHAM

,' V

is repeated. But no one truly believes it. ^d parents will always
be the last to believe.

The autobiographical novel, which Emerson predicted would
grow in importance with time, has replaced the great confessions.
It is not a mixture of truth and fiction, this genre of Hterature, but
an expansion and deepening of truth. It is more authentic, more
veridical, than the diary. It is not the flimsy truth of facts which
the authors of these autobiographical novels offer but the truth of
emotion, reflection and understanding, truth digested and assimilated.
The being revealing himself does so on all levels simultaneously.

That is why books like Death on the Installment Plan and the
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man catch us in the very bowels.
The sordid facts of miseducated youth acquire, through the hate,
rage and revolt of men Hke Celine and Joyce, a new significance.
As to the disgust which these books inspired when they first
appeared, we have the testimony of some very eminent men of
letters. Their reactions are also significant and revelatory. We
know where they stand as regards truth. Though they speak in
the name of Beauty, we are certain that Beauty is not their concern.
Rimbaud, who took Beauty upon his knees and found her ugly,
is a far more reHable criterion. Lautr^amont, who blasphemed
more than any man in modem times, was much closer to God
than those who shudder and wince at his blasphemies. As for the
great Hars, the men whose every word is flouted because they
invent and fantasticate, who could be more staunch and eloquent
advocates of truth than they ?

Truth is stranger than fiction because reaHty precedes and includes
imagination. What constitutes reaHty is unlimited and undefinable.
Men of Httle imagination name and classify ; the great ones are
content to forego this game. For the latter, vision and experience
suflSce. They do not even try to tell what they have seen and felt,
for their province is the ineffable. The great visions wliich have
come down to us in words are but the pale, jeweled reflections
of indescribable happenings. Great events may be soul-stirring,
but great visions transfix one. As a saint — that is to say, as a wretched
sinner struggling with his conscience — Augustine is magnificent ;
as a theologian he is dull, overwhelmingly duU. As teacher and
lover Ab^lard is magnificent, for in both realms he was in his

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

element. He never became a saint ; he was content to remain
a man. H^loise is the true saint, but the Church has never admitted
it. The Church is a human institution which often mistakes the
criminal for the saint and vice versa.

When we come to Montezuma we are in a totally different world.
Again we have lustre and inner radiance. Again there is splendor,
magnificence, beauty, imagination, dignity and true nobiHty.
Again the awesome bright ambiance of the gods. What a ruffian
is Cortez ! Cortez and Pizarro — they make our hearts bleed vwth
disgust. In their exploits man touches nadir. They stand out
as the supreme vandak of all time.

Prescott's monumental work,* which we usually happen upon
in adolescence, is one of those terrifying and illuminating creations
which put the seal of doom on our youthful dreams and aspirations.
We of this continent, we adolescents who had been drugged and
hypnotized by the heroic legends of history books (which begin
only after the bloody preface written by the Conquistadores), we
learn with a shock that this glorious continent was forced open
with inhuman violence. We learn that the " fountain of youth "
is a pretty symbol masking a hideous story of lust and greed. The
lust for gold is the foundation on which this empire of the New
World rests. Columbus followed a dream, but not his men, not
the swashbuckling bandits who followed after him. Through the
mists of history Columbus now seems Hke a quiet, serene madman.
(The reverse of Don Quixote.) What all unwittingly he set in
motion, what one eminent British writer calls " the American
horror," f has the quaUty and content of nightmare. With every

* The Conquest of Mexico and Peru.

t " It is a very hard thing to escape the American horror ; and quite impos-
sible, I suppose, to explain to those who don't see what it is that the victims
of it see. The horror can be very big. But it can also be very small. Most
things of this sort can be detected by their smell ; and I think this particular
horror is usually found — ^like the inside of an American coffin after the
embalming process has run its course — to smell of a mixture of desolate
varnish and unspeakable decomposition. The curious thing about it is
that it is a horror that can only be felt by imaginative people. It is more
than a mere negation of all that is mellow, lovely, harmonious, peaceful,
organic, satisfying. It is not a negation at all ! It is a terrifying positive.
I think at its heart lies a sort of lemur-like violence of gruesome vulgarity.
It certainly loves to dance a sort of " danse macabre V of frantic self-assertion.
It has something that is antagonistic to the very essence of what the old
cultures have been training to us for ten thousand years." (John Cowper
Powys in his Autobiography.)

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THE PLAINS OP ABRAHAM

new boatload came fresh vandals, fresh assassins. Vandals and
assassins who were not content simply to plunder, pillage, rape and
exterminate the living, but like devils incarnate fell upon the earth
itself, violated it, annihilated the gods who protected it, destroyed
every last trace of culture and refinement, never ceasing in their
depredations until confronted by their own frightening ghosts.

The story of Cabeza de Vaca (in North America), and that is
why I speak of it over and over, breathes the magic of redemption.
It is a heartbreaking story as well as an inspiring one. This scape-
goat of a Spaniard really expiates the crimes of his predatory pre-
decessors. Naked, abandoned, hunted, persecuted, enslaved, for-
saken even by the God he had perfunctorily worshipped, he is
driven to the last ditch. The miracle occurs when, ordered by his
captors (the Indians) to pray for them, to heal them of their ills
or die, he obeys. It is a miracle indeed which he performs — at
the bidding of his captors. He who was as dust is Hfted up, glorified.
The power to heal and restore, to create peace and harmony, does
not vanish. Cabeza de Vaca moves through the wilderness of what
is now Texas like the risen Christ. Reviewing his life in Spain,
as a " European," as a faithful servant of his Majesty the Emperor,
he reahzes the utter emptiness of that Hfe. Only in the wilderness,
abandoned to a cruel fate, was he able to come face to face with
his Creator and his fellow creatures. Augustine found Him "in
the vast halls of his memory." De Vaca, like Abraham, found
Him " in the direct conversation."

If only our history had taken its direction at this crucial point !
If only this Spaniard, in all the might and the glory that was revealed
unto him, had become the forerunner of the American to come !
But no, this inspiring figure, this true warrior, is almost buried
from sight. Ringed in light, he is nevertheless absent from the
chronicles our children are given to read. A few men have written
of him. A very few. One of these, Haniel Long, has interpreted
for us de Vaca's own historic document. It is an ** Interlinear " of
the first order. The true and essential narrative has been exhumed
and rendered widi poetic Hcence. Like a powerful beacon, it sheds
illumination upon the bloody confusion, the atrocious nightmare,
of our beginnings here in this land of the red Indian.

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THE STORY OF MY HEART

Some few years before sailing for Paris I had occasional meetings
with my old friend Emil Schnellock in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.
Wc used to stroll leisurely over the downs in the summer evenings,
talking of the fundamental problems of Ufe and eventually about
books. Though our tastes were quite divergent, there were certain
authors, such as Hamsun and D. H. Lawrence, for whom we had
a common enthusiasm. My friend Emil had a most lovable way
of deprecating his knowledge and understanding of books ; pre-
tending to be ignorant or obtuse, he would ply me with questions
which only a sage or a philosopher could answer. I remember
this short period vividly because it was an exercise in humility and
self-control on my part. The desire to be absolutely truthful with
my friend caused me to realize how very Httle I knew, how very
Httle I could reveal, though he has always maintained that I was
a guide and a mentor to him. In brief, the result of these com-
munions was that I began to doubt all that I had bHthely taken for
granted. The more I endeavored to explain my point of view the
more I floundered. He may have thought I acquitted myself well,
but not I. Often, on parting from him, I would continue the inner
debate interminably.

I suspect that I was rather arrogant and conceited at this time,
that I had all the makings of an intellectual snob. Even if I did not
have all the answers, as we say, I must have given the illusion of
being thus endowed. Talk came easily to me ; I could always spin
a glittering web. Emil's sincere, direct questions, always couched
in the most humble spirit, punctured my vanity. There was some-
thing very artful about these innocent questions of his. They made
clear to me that he not only knew a lot more than he pretended
but that he sometimes knew much more than I did myself. If he
read far less than I, he read with much greater attention and, as
a result, he retained much more than I ever did. I used to think
172

"THE STORY OF MY HEART

his memory astounding, and it was indeed, but, as I discovered later,-
it was the fruit of patience, love, devotion. He had, moreover, a
gift which I only learned the value of much later, namely, the
abihty to discover in every author that which is valuable and lasting.
By comparison I was ruthless and intolerant. There were certain
authors I absolutely could not stomach : I ruled them out as being
beneath one's attention. Ten years, perhaps twenty years later,
I might confess to my good friend Emil that I had found something
of merit in them, an admission which often took him by surprise
because, influenced by my dogmatic assertions, he had in the mean-
time come to suspect that he had overrated these authors. There
was always this amusing and sometimes bewildering decalage where
our opinions of authors were concerned.

There was one author whom he recommended to me with great
warmth — it must have been ^ good twenty years ago. Knowing
nothing about him or the Httle book he had written, never having
heard the name before, I made a mental note of it and passed on.
For some reason, at the time Emil mentioned it to me, I got the
impression that it was a " sentimental " narrative. The Story of my
Hearty it was called, and the author was English. Richard JefFeries,
no less. Meant nothing to me. I would read it some day — ^when I
had nothing better to do.

It is strange — I have touched on this before, I know — that even if
one does forget the title and author of a book once recommended
one does not forget the aura which accompanied the recommenda-
tion. A Httle word or phrase, an extra touch of warmth or zeal,
keeps a certain vague remembrance aUve in the back of one's head.
We ought always to be alert to these smouldering vibrations. No
matter if the person recommending the book be a fool or an idiot,
we should always be ready to take heed. Of course my friend Emil
was neither a fool nor an idiot. He was of an unusually warm nature,
tender, sympathetic and beHeving. That something " extra " which
he had imparted on this occasion never ceased working in me.

Here let me digress a moment to speak of something which has
been on my mind frequently of late. It has to do with the recollec-
tion of a certain " fat boy," whose name I hke to think was Louis,
because there is something about the name Louis which describes
this type to a tec. (" Je me nomme Louis Salavin ! ") Now Louis,

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I recalled just the other day, was the one who usually presided over
our discussions of life and books in the vacant lot at the comer. He
was a fat boy, as I said, and if I were to search for the word to
categorize him, I would choose diclassi. (Or, let us say — " out-
lander.") I mean that this Louis, like all his tribe, had neither
background nor milieu, neither home, parents, relatives, traditions,
customs or fixed habits. Detached and apart, he mingled with the
world only in obedience to a subHme kind of condescension. It was
natural that he should possess the oracular gift. I can see this Louis
of ours all over again, perched like a stuffed vulture atop the fence
which closed off the lot. It is the month of November and a huge
bonfire is blazing. We have all contributed our mite to the feast —
chippies, raw potatoes, onions, carrots, apples, whatever could be
grabbed off. Soon we wiU be standing by Louis* feet, munching our
bit and ^warming up for the discussion which is certain to ensue.
This particular day I remember that we touched on The Mysteries of
Paris* It was a strange world for us kids, this world of Eugene Sue
who, it is said, was one of Dostoievsky's favorite authors. We were
much more at home in the imaginary worlds of the writers of
romance. Louis hstened benignly and directed the discussion with
an invisible wand. Now and then he put in a cryptic word or two.
It was as if Moses spake. Nobody ever questioned Louis* veracity.
" I have spoken " — that was the tone of his " dicta.**

What precisely Louis said is completely lost to me. All that
remains is the tone of authority, the certitude behind his words.
There was an additional quaUty, almost like grace, which Louis
conveyed to us in these moments. It was approval — or benedic^on,
if you Hke. " Continue your meanderings,** he seemed to say.
" Follow out every clue, every gossamer thread. Eventually you
will know.'* If we had doubts, he urged us to cultivate them. If we
passionately, blindly beheved, he also approved. " It's your show,"
he seemed to insinuate. Just as de Sade says : " Your body is yours
alone ; you are the only person in the world who has a right to
take pleasure from it and to permit whoever you will to get pleasure
from it . . . "f

It was the mind Louis was interested in. Not " our " minds, or any

* (See the end of this chapter for a note on Eugene Sue.)
tLd Philosophie dans le boudoir.

174

"THE STORY OP MY HEART

particular mind, but Mind. It was as though Louis were reveaHng
to us the essential nature of mind. Not thought, but mind. There
was mystery attached to mind. Any one could grapple with thought,
but mind . . .? So it mattered not to Louis what the " truth " might
be as regards the problems we were then confronting for the first
time in our young lives. Louis was trying to make us understand
that it was all a game, so to speak. A very high game too. His
repUes, or observations, cryptic though they were, had for us all the
import of revelation. They gave an importance hitherto unknown
to the questioner rather than the question. Who is it that asks ?
Whence comes this question ? Why ?

Divine or die — such was the terrible dilemma proposed
by the sphinx to the candidates for Theban royalty. The
reason is that the secrets of science are actually those of
life ; the alternatives are to reign or to serve, to be or
not to be. The natural forces will break us if we do not put
them to use for the conquest of the world. There is no
mean between the height of kinghood and the abyss of
the victim state, unless we are content to be counted
among those who are nothing because they ask not why
or what they are.*

It now seems undeniable to me that Louis, even as a mere youth,
had divined some extraordinary secret of life. The pleroma was
about him. Just to be in his presence was to partake of a fulbess
indescribable. He never pretended to be the possessor of great
knowledge or wisdom. He preferred our company to that of the
boys his own age. Did he know — it seems quite possible ! — that
these latter were already " lost," abandoned to the world ? At any
rate, without in the least suspecting it, Louis had assumed the role
of hierophant.

How much more we learned from Louis than from our appointed
instructors ! I realize it now when I think of another boy my own
age, whom I liked exceedingly, and who used to go out of his
way every day to walk home with me firom school. Joe Maurer was
his name. I had tremendous respect for his intellect as well as his
character. He and the French boy, Claude de Lorraine, whom I

* The History of Magic, by Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Louis Constant) ;
William Rider & Son, Ltd., London, 1922.

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

have spoken of elsewhere, were virtually models for me throughout
this period. One day I made the mistake of introducing my friend
Joe Maurer to Louis. Until that moment I had not the least suspicion
that in the very being of Joe Maurer there existed a grave flaw. It
was while Ustening to Louis, who had gone into a monologue, that
I saw written all over Joe Maurer's face — doubt. Then I was made
wimess of a dreadful event : the incineration of my dear young
skeptic. In that flood-Hke smile of compassion which Louis could
summon on occasion I saw Httle Joe Maurer consumed to a crisp.
Louis had put the torch to that petty, vaunting intellect which had so
impressed me. He had turned on him the full power of Mind — ^and
there was nothing left (for me) of my comrade's intellect, character
or being.

Seeing Louis now, in my mind's eye, astride the fence billeted
with announcements — ^huge flaming posters — of coming events
(Rebecca of Sunnyhrook Farm, Way Down East, The Wizard of Oz,
Bamum & Bailey's Circus, Burton Holmes* Travelogues, Houdini,
Gendeman Jim Corbett, Pagliacci, Maude Adams in the eternal Peter
Pan, and so on), seeing Louis perched there Hke a rotund wizard, a
lad of sixteen yet so immeasurably superior to us, so distant and yet
so close, so serious and yet so carefree, so absolutely sure of himself
and yet so unconcerned about his own person, his own fate, I ask
myself— u'/id/ ever became of Louis ? Did he disappear from our ranks
to become the dominant character of some strange, occult book i
Has he, under the cloak of anonymity perhaps, written works
which I have read and marveled over ? Or did he take off", at an
early age, for Arabia, Tibet, Abyssinia — to disappear from " the
world " i Such as Louis never meet with an ordinary end.

A moment ago he was as aUve to me as when I was a boy of ten
standing in the vacant lot at the comer. I am certain he is still very
much alive. It would not be at all remarkable if one day he
announced himself here at Big Sur. All those other lads I played
with and who were so very, very close to me, it then seemed, I never
expect to hear of Once I thought it strange that our paths should
never cross again. Not any more. There are a handful who remain
with you always — " even unto the end of the world."

But Louis I what was he doing in that grotesque body i Why
had he assumed such a disguise ? Was it to protect himself against
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"the StOHY Ql» MY HEART

fools and ignoramuses ? Louis, Louis, what I would not give to
know your real identity !

My friend Emil, it is high time to acknowledge my debt to you.
How in the name of heaven could I possibly have avoided reading
this book for so long ? Why did you not shout the title in my cars ?
Why were you not more insistent i Here is a man who speaks my
inmost thoughts. He is the iconoclast I feel myself to be yet never
fully reveal. He makes the utmost demands. He rejects, he scraps,
he annihilates. What a seeker ! What a daring seeker ! When you
read the following passage I wish you would try to recall those talks
we had in Prospect Park, try to remember, if you can, the
nature of my fumbling answers to those " deep " questions you
propounded ... ->

The mind is infinite and able to understand everything
that is brought before it ; there is no hmit to its under-
standing.* The limit is the Uttleness of the things and
the narrowness of the ideas which have been put for it
to consider. For the philosophies of old time past and
the discoveries of mooem research are as nothing to it.
They do not fill it. When they have been read, the mind
passes on, and asks for more. The utmost of them, the
whole together, make a mere nothing. These things have
been gathered together by immense labor, labor so great
that it is a weariness to think of it ; but yet, when all is
summed up and vmtten, the mind receives it all as easily
as the hand picks flowers. It is like one sentence — ^rcad and
gone.f

Emil, reading Richard Jcfferics, I suddenly recall my sublime —
forgive me if I call it that — ^ycs, my subUmc impatience. What
are we waiting for i Why are we marking time ? Was not that me all
over i It used to annoy you, I know, but you were tolerant of me.
You would ask me a question and I would reply with a bigger one.
For the hfe of me I could not understand, and would not understand,
why we did not scrap everything immediately and begin afiesh.
That is why, when I came across certain utterances from the lips of

* Curious that Lautrdamont said almost the same : " Nothing is
incomprehensible."

fThis and other citations are taken from the Haldeman-Julius r«|)rint
of JefFeries* Story of My Heart.

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Louis Lambert — another Louis ! — I nearly jumped out of my skin. I
was suffering then exactly as he had suffered.

I am not altogether convinced that there are many who suffer
for the reasons intimated and to the degree which Louis Lambert
tells us he suffered. Time and again I have hinted that there is a
tyrant in me which continues to assert that society must one day
be governed by its true masters. When I read Jefferies' statement :
" In twelve thousand written years the world has not yet built
itself a House, nor filled a Granary, nor organized itself for its
own comfort " — this old tyrant which refuses to be smothered rises
up again. Time and again, touching on certain books, certain authors,
recalling the tremendous impact of their utterances — men Hke
Emerson, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Whitman, the Zen masters
especially — ^I think with fury and resentment (still !) of those early
teachers into whose hands we were entrusted. There was our
principal at " dear old 85," for example. What a bundle of vanity
and conceit ! He walks in one day, while we're studying arithmetic,
begs the teacher to let him take over, and in the space of a few
minutes goes to the blackboard and draws the figure eight lying on
its side. " What does that signify ? " he asks. An impressive silence.
No one knows, of course. Whereupon he announces sententiously :
** Boys, that is the sign for infinity ! " Nothing further said about
it. An egg lying on its side — ^nothing more. A Uttle later, in High
School, comes Dr. Murchisson, another mathematician and an ex-
commander of the Navy. A Hving monument to discipline, this
bird. ** Never ask why ! Obey ! " That's Commander Murchisson,
One day I plucked up the courage to ask why we studied geometry.
(It seemed an utterly senseless, useless study to me.) For answer he
tells me that it is good discipline for the mind. Is that an answer, I
ask you i Then, by way of punishment for my temerity and im-
pudence, he makes me memorize a speech he has written for me,
which I am to dehver before the whole school. It is about battle-
ships, the various types there are, the kinds of armament they carry,
their varying speeds and the effectiveness of their broadsides. Do you
wonder that I still nourish a healthy contempt for this old master ?
Then there was ** Bulldog " Grant, the Latin teacher . . . om first
Latin teacher. (Why I chose to study Latin is still a mystery to me.)
Anyway, the man was an absolute conundrum to us. One moment
178

"the story of my heart"

he would be apoplectic with rage, positively beside himself, " hop-
ping mad," as we say, the veins standing out like cords at the
temples, the perspiration rolling down his puffed red-apple cheeks.
Why ? Because some one had used the wrong gender or employed
the ablative instead of the vocative. The next moment he would be
wreathed in smiles, telling us a joke, a risque one usually. Every day
he began the session by calling the roll, as if it were the most impor-
tant thing on God's earth. Then, to warm us up he would bid us
rise, clear our throats, and yell at the top of our lungs : ** Hie, haec,
hoc . . . huius, huius, huius . . . huic, huic, huic ..." right
through to the end. This and the conjugation of the verb " amo "
are all I retain of the first three years of Latin. Instructive, what !
Later, under another Latin teacher named Hapgood, a good egg, by
the way, one who had a real love for his bloody Vergil, we used to
receive a surprise visit now and then from the principal. Dr. Paisley .
To this day, I tell you, the latter remains for me the symbol incarnate
of the pedagogue. In addition to being a blunderbuss and dunderhead
he was an arch-tyrant. Just to be near him was to be filled with fear,
terror and dread. Bloodless he was, with a heart of stone. His Httle
game — get this ! — was to break in on us at some unexpected moment,
march to the head of the room on tiptoes, and, pretending that he
wished to keep his hand in, beg dear Professor Hapgood (who had
no choice in the matter) to let him take over for a few minutes.
Plunking himself in the master's chair, he picks up the book (the
Aeneid) which he undoubtedly knew by heart, scans it intently as
though puzzling it out, then quietly asks the professor (with his eyes
on us) where we were. Hm ! He riffles the pages, chooses a passage
which he reads to himself, then picks on one of us to rattle off the
translation. Naturally, terrified of him as we all were, what Httle
ability his poor victim had vanished hke smoke. But Dr. Paisley
seemed not at all surprised or displeased ; on the contrary, he reacted
as though this — this utter blankness of mind — ^were entirely natural
and customary. All he was waiting for was to give us his version of
the translation. He would do it falteringly, as i£ groping his way
through the bloody text. Sometimes he would look up, and
addressing the air above us, would ask if we didn't perhaps prefer
this rendition to that. None of us gave a fuck which way he inter-
preted the passage. All we were praying for was that he would leave

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

as soon as possible. He gave off the odor, I must add, of camphor,
arnica and embahning fluid. He was the very corpse of learning . . .
TTicre is one more I must mention — Doc Payne. He was a testy chap
but likable in a way, especially out of class. He smoked a lot, we
observed, and was as eager for the class to be dismissed as we our-
selves. It meant a few puflfs on the sly for him. Anyway, he taught
us ancient, medieval and modem history — one after another, just
like that. To him history was dates, battles, peace treaties, names of
generals, statesmen, diplomats — " all the rats," so to speak. Because
he was more human than the rest I can't forgive him for the " omis-
sions." What do I mean f Just this. Never once, at the beginning
of a semester, did he give us a bird's-eye view of what we were
in for. Never once did it occur to him to " orient " us in this vast
muddle of dates, names, places, etc. If he expatiated at all, it was on
some campaign long forgotten, some " decisive battle " of the world.
I can sec him all over again, with chalk in hand — red, white and
blue — designating by chicken tracks the positions of the opposing
armies. Very important for us to know why at a certain moment
the cavalry was unleashed, or why the center gave way, or why
some other fool manoeuvre took place. He never enlarged upon
the character, temperament, genius (miUtary or otherwise) of the
leaders of these great conflicts. He never gave us his own pr^ds of
the causes of the various wars. We followed the books he handed
us, and if we had any ideas of our own, we smothered them. It was
more important to have the right date, the exact terms of the treaty
under discussion, than to have a wide, general, integrated picture of
the whole subject. He might have said, on opening the book of
ancient history, for example, and here I take the Uberty of adHbbing :
** Boys, young men, in the year 9,763 B.C. the world found itself
in a pecuUar state of stasis. The grass and grains on either bank of the
Iriwaddy were virtually extinct. The Chinese, just beginning to feel
their oats, were on the march. The Minoan civilization of Crete and
her colonies presented no threat to the other up-and-coming nations
of the world. The rudiments of every invention now known were
already in existence. The arts flourished everywhere, as they had
for unknown ages in the past. The principal reHgions were such and
such. No one knows why at this precise moment in history certain
definite movements began to take place. In the East there was such
iSo

"THE STORY OP MY HEART

and such an alignment offerees ; in the West another. Suddenly a
figure appeared named Hochintuxityscy ; almost nothing is known
about this great figure, except that he initiated a wave of new Ufe . . . "
You see what I mean. He could have drawn for us on that black-
board which was a perpetual vexation a map of the then world, and
on the rear blackboard a map of the world as it is today. He could
have made some boxes, by means of vertical and horizontal lines,
and in them placed a few saHent names, dates, events — to give us
our bearings. He could have drawn a tree and on its Umbs and
branches shown the evolution of the arts, sciences, reHgions and
metaphysical ideas throughout history. He could have told us that
with recent times history has become the metaphysics of history.
He could have shown us how and why the greatest of historians
differ with one another. He could have done something more, I say,
than force us to memorize names, dates, battles and so on. He could
even have ventured to give us a picture of the next hundred years —
or asked us to describe the fiiture in our own terms. But he never
did. And so I say : " Damn him and all history books ! ** From the
study of history, mathematics, Latin, English Uterature, botany,
physics, chemistry, art I have gotten nothing but anguish, desperation
and confusion. From four years in High School I retain nothing
but the remembrance of the fleeting pleasure evoked by the
reading of Ivanhoe and Idylls of the King. From grammar school I
remember only one Uttle episode — ^in the arithmetic class again. This
is all I got out of eight years of primary instruction. It was this . . .
Our teacher, Mr. MacDonald, a gaunt, sombre person with almost
no sense of humor and easily given to anger, asked me a direct
question one day which I was unable to answer. Being rather fond
of me, I suppose, he took the pains of going to the blackboard and
explaining the problem thoroughly. (It probably had to do with
firactions.) When he had finished he turned to me and said : " Now,
Henry, do you understand ? " And I answered, ** No, sir." Upon
which the class burst into an uproar. I was left to stand there, feeling
like the veriest idiot. Suddenly, however, this Mr. MacDonald
turned on the class furiously and ordered the boys to be quiet.
" Instead of laughing at him,** he said, " I want you boys to take an
example fiom Henry. Here is a boy who wants to know. He has
the courage to say he does not understand. Remember this ! And

i8i

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

try to do likewise, instead of pretending that you understand when
you don't." That httle lesson sank deep. It not only salved my
wounded pride, it taught me true humiUty. All my hfe, whether as a
result of this or not, I know not, I have been able to say, in critical
moments : " No, I don't understand. Explain it again, if you will."
Or, if I am asked a question which I really cannot answer I can say
without blushing, without a sense of shame or guilt : ** I'm sorry,
but I don't know the answer." And what a reUef it is to speak thus !
It is in such moments that the real answer usually comes — after one
has confessed his ignorance or inabiUty. The answer is always there,
but we must put ourselves in readiness to receive it. We should
know, however, that there are people to whom one must never put
certain questions. The answer is not in them ! Among these people
is the whole body of instructors to whom we are deUvered from
infancy hand and soul. These defmitely do not know the answers.
Nor, what is worse, do they know how to make us seek the answers
in ourselves.

" If the eye is always watching, and the mind on the alert, ulti-
mately chance supphes the solution," says Jefferies. True. But what
is here termed chance is something of our own creation.

Suddenly I recall the name and presence of Dr. Brown. Dr.
Brown was our " guest speaker " at the close of every grammar
school period. I must speak of Dr. Brown because I would not for a
minute have him, dead or aHve, imagine that I include him in the
category of nobodies mentioned above. Dr. Brown always appeared,
just as vacation was about to begin, on wings of love. In fact, you
felt that they were still fluttering, his wings, when he rose from his
seat on the platform and made ready to say a few words. It was as
though Dr. Brown knew each and every one of us intimately and
was enveloping us in his all-enfolding mantle of love. His words came
forth with palpitating warmth. He had just returned, it always
seemed, from Asia, Africa or Europe, and he wanted us to be the first
with whom to share his glorious experiences. That was the impres-
sion he gave, and I have no doubt it was genuine. He was a man who
loved boys. What office he filled I no longer remember. He may
have been a school superintendent ; he was probably also a deacon
of the church. No matter. He was a man, he had a big heart, and
he brimmed over with love. Nowadays we call such talks as Dr.
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"the story of my heart

Brown gave " inspirational." Men are paid to turn them on or off
at will. The effect of course is nil ; we all recognize the caricature.
Dr. Brown was a truly inspired individual. All that he had read, and
he was a man of great culture, all he had seen on his trips round the
world, for he was a veritable globe-trotter, he had assimilated and
woven into the very texture of his being. He was Hke a well-soaked
sponge. One Httle squeeze of the fmgers and he oozed water. When
he rose to speak he was so full, so charged, that for a good few
moments he was unable to begin. Once launched, his mind sparked
in all directions at once. He was sensitive to the sHghtest pressure :
he could detect instantly the nature of our longing, and respond to it
immediately. In a quarter of an hour of this kind of communication
he " instructed " us as we had never been instructed during the weeks
and months of class. If he had been a teacher instead of our " guest
speaker" he would, undoubtedly, have been dismissed in short
order. He was too big for the system — for any system. He spoke
from the heart, not the head. I need hardly repeat that no one ever
spoke to us thus — ^not even the pastor. No, the pastor emanated a
kind of vague, prescribed love which was like milk and water. He
really did not give a damn about any one personally. He was
interested in saving souls (supposedly) but there was damned little
soul stuff in him. Dr. Brown reached our souls through our hearts.
He had a sense of humor, a grand sense of humor — one of the
infalHble signs of hberation. When he got through — ^his speech was
always too short for us — ^it was as if we had been given a bubble
bath. We were relaxed, refreshed, silky inside and out. What's more,
we felt a courage unknown before, a new kind of courage — I might
almost say a " metaphysical " courage. We felt brave before the
world because the good Dr. Brown had given us back our kingship.
We were boys still — ^he never tried to pretend that we were ** young
men " — ^but we had become boys whose eyes swam with visions,
whose appetite for life had increased. We were ready for hard
tasks, vahant tasks.

I feel that I may now resume my theme with a clear conscience.
. . . The httle book which Richard Jefferies calls his " autobio-
graphy" is, to use the abused word once again, an inspirational work.
In the whole of Hterature there are very few such works. Much that
is styled inspirational is not at all ; it is what men who " specialize "

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THfi BOOKS IN MY LIFE

in the subject would like us to believe is so. I mentioned Emerson.
Never in my life have I met anyone who did not agree that Emerson
is an inspiring writer. One may not accept his thought in toto, but
one comes away from a reading of him purified, so to say, and
exalted. He takes you to the heights, he gives you wings. He is
daring, very daring. In our day he would be muzzled, I am certain.
There are other men, such as Orage and Ralph Waldo Trine (among
others) who are styled inspirational writers. They have undoubtedly
been such to great numbers of people. But will they abide t The
reader may smile, knowing the sort of individual I am, that I should
even mention such a name as R. W. Trine.* Am I mocking i
I am not. To each his due. At certain stages of one's evolution certain
individuals stand forth as teachers. Teachers in the true sense —
those who open our eyes. There are those who open our eyes and
there are those who lift us out of ourselves. The latter are not in-
terested in foisting upon us new beUefe but in aiding us to penetrate
reality more deeply, " to make progress," in other words, " in the
science of reaUty." They proceed fint by levelling all the super-
structures of thought. Second they point to something beyond
thought, to the ocean of mind, let us say, in which thought swims.
And last they force us to think for ourselves. Says Jeflferies, for
example, in the midst of his confession :

Now, today, as I write, I stand in exacdy the same
position as the Caveman. Written tradition, systems of
culture, modes of thought, have for me no existence. If
ever they took any hold of my mind it must have been
very shght ; they have long ago been erased.

That is a mighty utterance. An heroic utterance. Who can repeat
it honesdy and sincerely i Who is there that even aspires to make such
an utterance ? Jeflferies tells us towards the end of his book how he
had tried again and again to put into written words the thoughts
which had taken possession of him. Repeatedly he failed. And no
wonder, for what he succeeded in giving us finally, firagmentary
though he confesses it to be, is almost a defiance of thought. Explain-
ing how, " imder happy circumstances," he did at last begin (in 1880),
he states that he got no further than to write down a few notes.

* See my book Plexus for a long burlesque on In Tune with the Injinite.
184

**THE STORY OF MY HEART

" Even then," he says, " I could not go on, but I kept the notes (I
had destroyed all former beginnings), and in the end, two years
afterwards, commenced this book." He speaks of it as " only a
fragment, and a fragment scarcely hewn." Then he adds, and this I
think worth imderscoring : " Had I not made it personal I could
scarcely have put it into any shape at aU . . . I am only too conscious
of its imperfections, for I have as it were seventeen years of conscious-
ness of my own inabiHty to express this the idea of my life."

In this same small paragraph he makes an assertion which is very
dear to me and which is the only stop that can be offered to critics.
Speaking of the inadequacy of words to express ideas — and by this
he means, of course, ideas which lay beyond the habitual realms of
thought — attempting briefly to give his own definition of such moot
terms as soul, prayer, immortaUty, and declaring these to be deficient
still, he concludes : " I must leave my book as a whole to give its
own meaning to its words."

Perhaps the key to this amazing Httle book is the sentence which
runs thus : " No thought which I have ever had has satisfied my
soul." The story of his Hfe begins therefore with the realization of his
soul's hunger, his soul's quest. All that preceded this became as
nought. "Begin wholly afresh. Go straight to the sun, the im-
mense forces of the universe, to the Entity unknown ; go higher than
a god ; deeper than prayer ; and open a new day." Soimds like
D. H. Lawrence. I wonder now if Lawrence ever read JefFeries.
There is not only a similarity of thought but of accent and rhythm.
But then we find this same idiosyncrasy of speech, in English at any
rate, whenever we come upon an original thinker. The iconoclast
always exhorts us in short, staccato sentences. It is as if he were
transmitting telegraphically from a distant, higher station. It is an
utterly diflferent rhythm from that of the prophets, who are filled
with woe and lamentation, with objurgation and malediction. Some-
how, whether we accept the commands or not, we are stirred ;
our feet go through the motion of marching forward, our chests
heave, as if drawing in fresh draughts of oxygen, our eyes lift to
capture the fleeting vision.

And now let us get to " the Fourth Idea," which is rcaUy the
epitome of his soul's longing. He begins thus :

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THE BOOKS lU MV LIF£

Three things only have been discovered of that which
concerns the inner consciousness since before written
history began. Three things only in twelve thousand
written, or sculptured, years, and in the dumb, dim time
before then. Three ideas the Cavemen primeval wrested
from the unknown, the night which is round us still in
dayUght — the existence of the soul, immortality, the deity.
These things found, prayer followed as a sequential result.
Since then nothing further has been found in all the twelve
thousand years, as if men had been satisfied and had found
these to suffice. They do not suffice me. I desire to advance
further, and to wrest a fourth, and even still more than
a fourth, from the darkness of thought. I want more ideas
of soul-hfe. I am certain there are more yet to be found.
A great life — an entire civilization — Hes just outside the
pale of common thought. Cities and countries, inhabitants,
intelhgences, culture — an entire civilization. Except by
illustrations drawn from famiHar things, there is no way
of indicating a new idea. I do not mean actual cities,
actual civilization. Such hfe is different from any yet
imagined. A nexus of ideas exists of which nothing is
known — a vast system of ideas — a cosmos of thought.
There is an Entity, a Soul-Entity, as yet unrecognized.
These, rudely expressed, constitute my Fourth Idea. It
is beyond, or beside, the three discovered by the Cavemen ;
it is in addition to the existence of the soul ; in addition
to immortality ; and beyond the idea of the deity. I
think there is something more than existence.

In the same decade in which Jefferies enunciates these ideas, or
better, this appeal for new, deeper, richer, more encompassing ideas,
Madame Blavatsky put forth two astounding tomes into which
entered a labor so prodigious that men are still cracking their skulls
over them. I refer to The Secret Doctrine and his Unveiled. If they
accomplished nothing more, these two books, they certainly put
to rout the idea of the caveman*s contribution to our culture.
Drawing from every imaginable source, Madame Blavatsky amasses
a wealth of material to prove the everlasting continuity of esoteric
wisdom. According to this view, there never was a time when side
by side with the ** caveman," and even greatly anterior to him, there
did not exist superior beings, and by superior I mean superior in
every sense of the word. Certainly superior to those whom we
today consider as such. Indeed, it is not even a question with her,
i86

_LJ

"THE STORY OF MY HEART

or those who hold with her, of isolated superior beings but rather of
whole great blazing civilizations the existence of which we do not
even suspect.

Whether JefFeries knew of such views and rejected them I know
not. I don't imagine it would have mattered any to him if he had been
convinced that the only three ideas wrested from the unknown came
to us via the mages of forgotten epochs or via the cavemen, as he
says. I can see him sweeping the whole glittering array of knowledge
off the boards. He would still be able to affirm that these three ideas
are all we have — and what matter when they were put into circula-
tion or by whom. What he strives magnificently to make us under-
stand, make us realize, make us accept, is that these ideas came from a
source which has never dried up and never will dry up ; that we are
marking time, withering, ossifying, giving ourselves up to death, so
long as we rest content with these precious three and make no
effort to swim back to the source.

Filled with consuming wonder, awe and reverence for Hfe, never
able to get enough of sea, air and sky, realizing " the crushing hope-
lessness of books," determined to think things out for himself, it is
not at all extraordinary consequently to find him declaring that
the span of human life could be prolonged far beyond anything we
imagine possible today. Indeed, he goes further, much further, and
hke a true man of spirit asserts that " death is not inevitable to the
ideal man. He is shaped for a species of physical immortaHty." He
begs us to ponder seriously on what might happen " if the entire
human race were united in their efforts to eliminate causes of decay."

A few paragraphs further on he says, and with what justification :

The truth is, we die through our ancestors, we are
murdered by our ancestors. Their dead hands stretch forth
from the tomb and drag us down to their mouldering
bones. We in our turn are now at this moment preparing
death for our unborn posterity. This day those that die
do not die in the sense of old age, they are slain*

Every revolutionary figure, whether in the field of religion
or the field of poHtics, knows this only too well. " Begin wholly
afresh !" It is the old, old cry. But to slay the ghosts of the past

* Italics mine.

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

has thus far been an insuperable task for humanity. " A hen is only
an egg's way of making another egg," said Samuel Butler. One
wonders whose way it is that causes man to continue turning out
misfits, that makes him, surrounded and invested as he is by the most
potent and divine powers, satisfied to remain no more than he has
been and still is. Imagine what man is capable of, in his ignorance
and cruelty, to provoke from the lips of the Marquis de Sade upon
his first release from prison (afier almost thirteen years spent in
solitary confinement) these terrible words ; "... All my feelings
arc extinguished. I have no longer any taste for anything, I like
nothing any more ; the world which foolishly I so vvdldly regretted
seems to me so boring . . . and so dull ... I have never been
more misanthropic than I am now that I have returned among
men, and if I seem peculiar to others, diey can be assured that they
produce the same effect on me ... ** The plaint of this unfortunate
individual is today voiced by millions. From all quarters of the
globe there rises a wail of distress. Worse, a wail of utter despair.

" When," asb Jefferies (in 1882 !), " will it be possible to be
certain that the capacity of a single atom has been exhausted ?
At any moment some fortunate incident may reveal a fresh power."
Today we know — and how shamefully we have utilized it ! — the
power which resides in the atom. And it is today more than ever
before that man roams hungry, naked, abandoned.

" Begin afresh ! " The East rumbles. Indeed, the people of the
East are at last making an heroic effort to shake off the fetters which
bind them to the past. And what is the result i We of the West
tremble in fear. We would hold them back. Where is progress i
Who possesses enHghtenmcnt i

There is a sentence in Jefferies* Httle book which literally jumps
from the page — at least for me. " A reasoning process has yet to be
invented by which to go straight to the desired end." To which state-
ment I can hear the critical-minded objecting : " Excellent indeed,
but why doesnt he invent it ? " Now it is one of the virtues of the
men who inspire us that they always leave the way open. They
suggest, they stimulate, they point. They do not take us by the hand
and lead us. On the other hand I might say that there are men who
are this very moment striving to show us how to accomplish this
end. Now they are virtually unknown, but when the time comes
188

"THE STORY OP MY HEART

they will stand revealed. We arc not drifting blindly, however mudi
it may seem so. But perhaps I ought to give the whole of Jefferies*
thought here, for he has voiced it in a way which is unforgettable . . .

This hour, rays or undulations of more subtle mediums
are doubtless pouring on us over the wide earth,
unrecognized, and full of messages and intelligence from
the unseen.* Of these we are this day as ignorant as those
who painted the papyri were of Hght. There is an infinity
of knowledge yet to be known, and beyond that an infinity
of thought. No mental instrument even has yet been
invented by which researches can be carried direct to the
object. Whatever has been found has been discovered
by fortunate accident ; in looking for one thing another
has been chanced on. A reasoning process has yet to be
invented by which to go straight to the desired end. For
now the slightest particle is enough to throw the search
aside, and the most minute circumstance sufficient to
conceal obvious and briUiantly shining truths ... At
present the endeavor to make discoveries is Hke gazing
at the sky up through the boughs of an oak. Here a beauti-
ful star shines clearly ; here a constellation is hidden by
a branch ; a universe by a leaf Some mental instrument
or organon is required to enable us to distinguish between
the leaf which may be removed and a real void ; when
to cease to look in one direction, and to work in another
... I feel that there are infinities to be known, but they
are hidden by a leaf ...

Begin afresh ! Take another tack ! Or, as Claude Houghton
says : " All Change^ Humanity ! ** Or, as Klakusch says, in The
Maurizius Case^ " Stop, world of humans, and attack the problem
from another angle ! " Again and again a voice within us commands
us to get out of the rut, to leave bag and baggage, to change cars,
change direction. Now and then an individual obeys the secret
summons and undergoes what men call a conversion. But never
does a whole world Hft itself by the bootstraps and take a leap into
the blue.

Things that have been miscalled supernatural appear
to me simple, says Jefferies, more natural than nature,
than earth, than sea or sun ... It is matter which is the

* Very close to Maeterlinck's thought, as voiced in The Magic of the Stars.

x89

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

supernatural, and difficult of understanding . . . Matter
is beyond understanding, mysterious, impenetrable ; I
touch it easily, comprehend it, no. Soul, mind — the
thought, the idea — is easily understood, it understands
itself and is conscious. The supernatural miscalled, the
natural in truth, is the real. To me everything is super-
natural. How strange that condition of mind which cannot
accept anything but the earth, the sea, the tangible
universe ! Without the misnamed supernatural these to
me seem incomplete, unfinished. Without soul all these are
dead. Except when I walk by the sea, and my soul is by it,
the sea is dead. Those seas by which no man has stood —
by which no soul has been — whether on earth or the
planets, are dead. No matter how majestic the planet rolls
in space, unless a soul be there it is dead.

Unless a soul he there it is dead. The man of today should be better
able to comprehend this than Jefferies' contemporaries. For him this
planet is virtually extinct already.

Around 1880 English noveUsts of imagination — the writers
of " romances " — began to introduce into their works the so-called
and miscalled " supernatural " element. Theirs was a revolt against
the fateful tendency of the times, the bitter fruits of which we of
this generation are tasting. What is the gap, in thought or feeling,
between these writers (today regarded as ridiculous and misguided)
and our metaphysical scientists who struggle vainly to express a
larger, deeper, more significant view of the universe ? It is a
common observation nowadays that the man in the street accepts
the " miracles " of science in a matter of fact way. Every day of
his Hfe the common man makes use of what men in other ages
would have deemed miraculous means. In the range of invention,
if not in powers of invention, the man of today is nearer to being a
god than at any time in his history. (So we like to beheve ! ) Yet
never was he less godlike. He accepts and utilizes the miraculous
gifts of science unquestioningly ; he is without wonder, without
awe, reverence, zest, vitahty or joy. He draws no conclusions from
the past, has no peace or satisfaction in the present, and is utterly
unconcerned about the future. He is marking time. That is about
the most we can say for him.

We must, however, also say this — ^his conception of time, and of
190

"THE STORY OF MY HEART

space, together with other deeply embedded notions, such as the
sacred doctrine of causaHty, the good work, progress, purpose,
duty and so forth, have been killed ^r him by the scientist, the
philosopher, the inventor, the big boss and the miUtarist. Precious
httle is left of the universe he was bom into. Yet it is all there,
every bit of it, and it will accompany him as he journeys backward
or forward. His concepts only have been altered. Not his way
of thinking. Not his thinking faculty, or his thinking powers.
To the most baffling degree he remains immune and impervious
to all that happens round and about him. He is not participating,
he is being dragged along by the scalp. He initiates nothing, unless
it be more reaction. What an image he presents, modem man !
A frightened and bewildered, a confused and bedeviled wretch,
being dragged by the scalp, as I said, to some high, awesome place
where all is about to be revealed to him, but where, whimpering
and shuddering, he will be sent hurtling into the void. It is thus,
and thus only, that I see him entering the great arcanum of truth
and wisdom. How else could it be ? He himself has locked all
doors ; he himself has kicked away all supports ; he himself has
elected (if we may thus dignify him) to be flung into " the cauldron
of rebirth." Sublime, ignominious spectacle. Punishment and
salvation in one.

What, we ask, could or would constitute a " miracle ** for man
in this supine state ? Would it be a miracle to spare him his just
fate ? Would it be a miracle if, just as he were going over the
brink, his eyes were suddenly opened? What does modem man ex-
pect, if anything, in the way of miracles ? The only miracle I can
possibly think of would be for him to beg, at the last moment, for a
chance to begin afresh.

Is it not baffling that this species of man who believes so soHdly
in concrete reaHty, and only in concrete reaHty, can talk of the moon,
or planets even more distant, as though they were only points of
departure in his imminent physical exploration of the universe ;
that he can think of communicating with unknown beings in the
starry spheres or, what is more curious, think of how to defend
himself against possible invasion by them ; that he can visualize
himself abandoning this planet Earth and taking up a new mode of
life somewhere in the heavens, and realize (mentally, at least) that

191

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

such a change of residence would alter his physical age, structure
and being, would make him over so completely, in short, that he
would be unrecognizable to himself t Is it not baffling, I say, that
such thoughts do not terrify him — ^neither uprooting from his
native planet, nor change of time, rhythm, metabolism, nor acquaint-
ance with beings far, far stranger than any he has ever imagined t
And yet, yes — and yet, to get him to love and respect his neighbor,
to endeavor to understand his fellow man, to share with him his
possessions, his joys and sorrows, to get him to make provision for
his progeny, to eUminate enmity, rivalry, jealousy, to create and
respect a few simple laws — for his own welfare — to cease struggling
for a bare existence and enjoy Hfe, to concentrate on the eHmination
(not just the cure) of disease, old age, misery, loneliness — oh, so
many, many things ! — to get him to welcome new ideas and not be
frightened of them, to get him to throw off superstition, bigotry,
intolerance and all the other bogus claims which have him by the
throat ... no, towards these vital ends he refuses stubbornly to make
a single step. He would rather walk out on his true problems,
would rather desert the planet and his fellow creatures. Could
there be a worse " renegade ** ? Is it any wonder that, anticipating
the advent of his glorious " new day " in the bosom of the stellar
deep, he is already filled with dread that his new neighbors may
resent his coming i What, after all, can he possibly bring the
denizens of these yet unknown worlds t What but disaster and ruin.
His pride tells him he is superior to these otherworld creatures, but
his heart speaks differently. Perhaps there where time is of another
order, where atmosphere and ambiance are one, " they " have
been expecting the approach of this dread event. Perhaps nowhere
in the vast swarms of habitable planets are there beings filled with
the conceit, pride, arrogance, ignorance and insensitivity of our
earthly creatures. So at least Marie CoreUi conjectures again and
again. Et elle a raison ! No, such as we are today, we may not
be at all welcome in these starry abodes. If we have not found
heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without. But
there is the possibility — z desperate, almost forlorn hope — that,
having caught a gHmpse " out there " of order, peace and harmony,
we who call ourselves men will recoil to this hell on earth and begin
afresh.
192

THE STORY OP MY HfiAftT

All through great literature runs the idea of the circuitous voyage.
Whatever man sets out to find, to v/hatever point in time or space
he flings his weary body, in the end he comes home, home to
himself. That the voyage to the moon will soon become fact I
have not the slightest doubt. The voyage to more distant reahns
will also be realized before long. Time is no longer a factor. Time
is being rolled up, like a carpet. Between man and his desires, in
the brief interval ahead, there may quite possibly be no lapse of time.
Like Franz WerfeFs characters in Star of the Unborn,* we may discover
how to point the needle to the place we would be in and fmd our-
selves there — instantaneously. Why not i If the mind can make
the leap, so can the body. We have only to learn how. We have
only to desire it, and it will be thus. The history of human thought
and of human accomplishments corroborates this truth. At present
man refuses to beHeve, or dares not beUeve, that things may come
about in this fashion. Between the thought and the goal he cushions
himself with inventions. He makes wings, but he still refuses " to
take wing." Thought, however, is already on the wing. The
Mind which contains all, and is all, is winging him on ahead of
himself At this very moment man is so infinitely farther ahead
in thought than in being that it is as if he were distended, like a
comet. The man of today Hves in the tail of his own comet-like
self. The tail of this monstrous distended self works havoc as it
passes through new and utterly unpredictable realms. One part
of man longs for the moon and other seizable worlds, never dreaming
that another part of him is already traversing more mysterious,
more spectacular realms.

Is it that man must make the circuit of the whole heavens before
coming home to himself? Perhaps. Perhaps he must repeat the
symboHc act of the great dragon of creation — coil and twist,
twine and intertwine, until at last he succeeds in putting tail in
mouth.

The true symbol of infinity is the full circle. It is also the symbol
of fulfillment. And fiilfillment is man's goal Only in fulfillment
will he find reality.

Aye, we must go full swing. Howe— where is it if not every-
where and nowhere at the same time i When he is in possession of

* The Vikiag Prws. New York, 1946.

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

his soul, then will man be fully aUve, caring nothing for immortaHty
and knowing nothing of death.
To begin wholly afresh may mean coming aUve at last !

A Note on Eugene Sue

A letter from Pierre Lesdain of Belgium offers the following about Eugene
Sue :

" Vous m'avez demand^ des 6claircissements sur Eugene Sue. Je ne suis
pas un lecteur assidu de Sue ; j'ai lu Les Mysteres de Paris, dans ma tendre
jeunesse et puis, jamais plus rien. Void la liste des livres d'Eugene Sue :

Kernock le Pirate, 1830

Plick et Plock, 1 83 1

Atar-Gull, 1831

La Salamattdre, 1832

La Vigie de Koat-Ven, 1833

Arthur, 1833

Historic de la Marine frangaise (5 vols.), 1835

Cicile, 1835

Latre'aumont (2 vols.), 1837

Jean Cavalier (2 vols.), 1840

Deux Histoires, 1840

Le Marquis de Litorikre

Le Morne au Diable (2 vols.), 1840

Mathilde (6 vols.), 1841

Le Commandeur de Malte, 1841

Les Mysteres de Paris (lo vols.), 1842-43

Pauli Monti, 1842

Thirise Dunoyer, 1842

Le Juif Errant (10 vols.), 1844-45

Martin ou V Enfant trouvi, 1847

Le Ripuhlicain des Campagnes, 1848

Le Berger de Kravan

Les Sept Pe'che's Capitaux (16 vols.)

Les Mysteres du Peuple, ou, Histoire d'unefamille a travers les ages (16 vols.)

Les Enfants de V Amour (6 vols.), 1852

Fernand Duplessis (6 vols.)

Le Marquis d'AmalJi (2 vols.), 1853

Gilbert et Gilberte (7 vols.), 1853

La famille Jouffroy (7 vols.), 1854

Le Fils de Famille (7 vols.), 1856

Les Secrets de VOreiller (7 vols.), 1858

Cette liste est etourdissante, elle me domie le vertige. Et que reste-t-il
de I'oeuvre, immense, quant au poids-papier des volumes et k leur nombre,
qui temoigne d'une luxuriance tropicale ? II n'en reste rien. A peine le
nom de I'auteur, nom predestine, qui provoque k la plaisanterie facile.
Mais on ne lit plus rien d'Eugfene Sue. II est dans le domaine public, et
aucun journal ne pense jamais i reprendre un de ses romans comme feuilleton.
Avant la guerre de 1940, je ne sais plus tres bien quel ^crivain Suisse — de
talent — a voulu publier un " condens6 " des Mystires de Paris. (L'anc^tre
des " condenses," peut-fitre.) Sans succes, je crois. O la parole de
I'Eccl^siaste !

194

"THE STORY OF MY HEART

Car Eugene Sue de son vivant a connu la gloire comme peu d'^crivains
au monde, une gloire tapageuse, vine gloire d'idole de la foule. On raconte
qu'Eug^ne Sue, garde national, comme tout autre citoyen en ce temps 1^,
ne s'6tait pas pr6sent6 pour prendre son tour de faction. Condamnation
automatique. Pour sc venger I'ecrivain refuse de donner au journal la
suite de celui de ses romans qui y passait en feuilleton et que les lecteurs
attendaient avidement. II y a presque une petite ^meute k Paris et le Ministre
doit lever la punition d'Eug^ne Sue.

Eugene Sue a-t-il eu r^ellement une influence sur Balzac et Dostoievski ?
C'est tres vite dit ; le prouver serait beaucoup plus long. Le succes d'Eugene
Sue a incite peut-6tre Balzac et Dostoievski k situer leurs romans dans les
milieux semblables k ceux dont Eugene Sue exploitait les particularit6s et
la nouveaute, en ce temps li. Les personnages du roman, fran^ais, jusqu'alors,
etaient factices, d'imagination pure, crees par jeu — comme Gil Bias qui
n'a rien de specifiquement espagnol ... II y a sur cette classe de la societ6
des romans d'une psychologie aigiie et profonde tels La Princesse de Cloves,
ou bien Les Liaisons Dange'reuses, mais il fallait, comme Madame de La Fayette
ou Choderlos de Laclos, avoir ete " nourri dans le serail " pour en " connaitre
les detours."

Eugene Sue n'est pas un romancier profond. II a une imagination debor-
dante, c'est quelque chose, bien sur, mais pas assez pour venir frapper a la
porte de la posterite, confiant qu'eUe I'ouvrira. L'imagination d'Eugene
Sue qui frappait si fort ses contemporains, nous fait sourire souvent et,
quelquefois, franchement eclater. La fin du fin pour Eugene Sue etait
d'amener dans un roman, le plus frequemment qu'il se pouvait, un genre
de dissertation morale, ce qu'il appelait ses utopies. Par exemple : on nc
devrait plus executer les condamnes k mort ; pour les chatier de leurs crimes,
il serait preferable de leur percer les yeux. Le proc^de a la longue devient
intolerable et crispant . . .

Eugene Sue est ne en 1804 ; mort en 1857. Son pere etait medecin ;
I'imperatrice Josephine fut sa marraine. II abandonnc ses etudes avant la
rhetorique ; etudie la medecine sous son pere, qui le fait embarquer comme
chirurgien k bord d'un bateau. (Les premieres oeuvres litteraires d'Eugene
Sue sont maritimes.) Son pere lui laissa en mourrant une fortune d'un million
(francs de I'epoque). Je ne sais pas si Eugene Sue en fit un bon usage . . ."

195

XII

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

May 3rd, 1950
My dear Pierre Lesdain :

The idea has occurred to me, lince reading your lengdiy and
most welcome letter of April 20th, to incorporate you into this
book about books which I am writing. That is why this letter
begins as of page 196 .. . There is no one to whom it gives me
greater pleasure to impart my thoughts, particularly my larval
thoughts. You are one of the most enthusiastic readers I know
of In your reviews you are often "against," but you are more
often ** for ** the author. When you attack you reveal your love,
not your rancor, envy, spite or jealousy. Often, when I think
back to my early days, I think of you, and I always see you with
book in hand or under your arm. Indeed, as I discover through
reading your weekly column in Volonti* I am certain now that
we were often reading the same author, if not the same book by
that author, at the same time.

It is over two weeks now since I have written anything, and my
head is seething with thoughts. As I may have explained to you
before, the reason I am in a continual state of bubble is because
of the books I am rereading — mosdy old favorites. Everything
nourishes, stimulates me. Originally I planned to write a slim
volume ; now it seems as if it will be a fat tome. Each day I jot
down in my notebook a few more tides which I recollect. This
is an exciting feature of my task, this exhuming from the imfathom-
able reservoir of memory a few new titles daily. Sometimes it
takes two or three days for a book which is in the back of my head,
or on the tip of my tongue, to announce itself completdy — author,
title, time and place. Once it becomes " fixed " in my memory,

* A weekly newspaper from Brusseb. Since this was written it has folded
up.
196

IBTTBR TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

all sorts of associations crowd in and open up undreamed of realms
of my dim past.

Thus I have already written what little I had to say about Gil
Bias before ever receiving the copy you tell me you are sending.
Gil Bias is one of the books I never read but about which there
hangs a tale, and — for me, at least — the tale is always as important
as the book. There are authors who intrigue me because of all I
have heard and read about them, because their lives interest me,
yet I cannot read their works. Stendhal is one, and the author of
Tristram Shandy another. But perhaps the superb example in this
respect is the Marquis de Sade. Everything I read about him,
whether for or against, excites me enormously. I have actually
read very Httle of all he has written, and this Uttle I read without
much pleasure or profit. Nevertheless, I beHeve in him, so to speak.
I think him a most important writer, a great figure, and one of the
most tragic wretches ever bom. I am going to write about him,
naturally, even though I shall never read the whole of him. (Who
has i) Incidentally, it may amuse you to know that I had great
difficulty recalling the tides of so-called ** obscene " works, both
those I had read and those I had only heard about. This is one
branch of literature with which I am only faindy acquainted. But
is it a " branch " of Hterature or is it another category of misnomers i

Here is a random thought en passant. Each time I pick up a
volume of Elie Faure I undergo a great emotional conflict. Time
and again, in speech and in writing, I have made mention of my
indebtedness to this great individual. I ought to write a panegyric
on him, but I doubt that I will, doubt that I can, any more than
I can for Dostoievsky or Whitman. There are some authors who
are at once too grand and too close to you. You never Uberate
yourself fi:om the thrall of their enchantment. Impossible to tell
where your own life and work separate or diverge from thein.
All is inextricably interwoven.

It seems, when I thiiJc of certain names, that my life began afiresh
a number of times. Doubdess because each time I rediscovered,
through the instrumentality of these divine interpreters, my own
being. You speak of having immersed yourself for three years
in Nietzsche and in him alone. I understand, though I never did
this with any author. But can you read Nietzsche today with

197

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

the same fervor ? Ah, there's the miracle ! Whoso has the power
to aiFect us more and more deeply each time we read him is indeed
a master, no matter what his name, rank or status be. This is a
thought which recurs as I reread my favorite authors. (I am certain,
for instance, that if I were to pick up The Birth of Tragedy — the
one book I have reread more than any other, I beheve — I am
certain, I say, that I would be "finished" for the day.) What
is the meaning of this undying enthusiasm for so many authors »
I ask this frequently of myself Does it mean I have not " evolved " ?
Does it mean I am naive ? What ? Whatever the answer, I assure
you I regard this weakness as a singular blessing. And if, in picking
up an old favorite, I should also happen to find in his book a quota-
tion from another of my great favorites, then my joy is unbounded.
Only yesterday, in glancing through The Dance Over Fire and
Water* this happened to me. On page six I found this from Walt
Whitman : " The world will be complete for him who himself
is complete." And on page eighty-four this, also from Whitman :
" You look upon Bibles and rehgions as divine — and I say that
they are divine. And I say that they have all come from you, can
come again from you, and that it is not they who give Hfe, but
you who give hfe." (May I say, for once in my life, that I am
proud it was an American who spoke thus !)

One of the reasons why I cannot write about these favorite
authors at length is first because I cannot refrain from quoting
them copiously, second because they have muscled so deep into
my very fibres that the moment I begin talking about them I echo
their language. It is not so much that I am ashamed of " plagiariz-
ing " the masters as that I am fearful of ever being able to recover
my own voice. Due to our slavish reading, we carry within us
so many entities, so many voices, that rare indeed is the man who
can say he speaks with his own voice. In the final analysis, is that
iota of uniqueness which we boast of as " ours " really ours ? What-
ever real or unique contribution we make stems from the same
inscrutable source whence everything derives. We contribute
nothing but our understanding, which is a way of saying— our
acceptance. However, since we are all modelled upon previous
models of which there is no end, let us rejoice if occasionally we

*By Elie Faure.
I?8

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

sound like the glorious ones, resound like those utterly emptied
beings who can say nothing more than ** Om."

And now to concentrate a few moments on the many issues
raised in your letter ... I cannot tell you how delighted I was
that you should so speedily have made use of the citation I sent
you from my old " master," John Cowper Powys. In the same
mail I find the hterary editor of Combat also quoting firom the
preface to Visions and Revisions. Soon I hope to find for you one
of Powys' books of interpretation, which I am sure you will enjoy.
I suppose he was never translated into French. To the French it
would doubtless seem like " bringing coals to Newcastle." The
other day, to gladden his heart and to make a long deferred obeisance,
I addressed him as " mon tr^ cher grand maitre." Had EHe Faure
been alive when I finally summoned the courage to approach his
office, I would doubtless have knelt at his feet and kissed his hand.

You speak of having to conquer the sentiment of " revolt,"
where one's early idols are concerned. True enough, though I
think this is a transitory phase. The first emotions, the first reactions,
are the true and lasting ones, we usually discover. (To discover
is to recover.) I must confess, however, that there are always a
few authors for whom, once we have lost our affection or reverence,
we are never again able to retrieve our original attitude. It is hke
a loss of grace. At this moment I cannot recall a single great author
— ** great " according to my definition — ^whom I have been deceived
in. Indeed, the further back I wander among my idols, the more
true and lasting seems my adoration. No deceptions. Particularly
in the realm of " boys* authors." No, the astonishing thing to me
is that, once my allegiance was given, I remained loyal. I remark
on this because loyalty is not one of my strong points. The excep-
tions are absolutely unimportant, altogether unworthy of note.
I remain, where authors are concerned, ** the constant lover."

It is this pecuHar trait (devotion i adoration i) which is causing
this book (hypothetically) to grow to astonishing proportions.
How can I ever finish testifying ? How can I ever put an end to
this song of love ? And why should I ? I, who have never kept a
diary, begin to perceive how tempting and compelling is the desire
to record the progress of one's inner voyage. I, moreover, who
on several occasions swore that I was through with books, went

199

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

SO far once as to become a manual worker, worse than that — a
veritable clodhopper— thinking thus (fatuously) to overcome
the disease.

The other night, rereading The Story of My Life by Helen Keller,
I came across the following lines by her teacher, Anne Mansfield
SulUvan :

" Reading, I think, should be kept independent of the regular
school exercises. Children should be encouraged to read for the
pure dehght of it. [Bravo !] The attitude of the child towards
his books should be that of unconscious receptivity. The great
works of the imagination ought to become a part of his life, as
they were once of the very substance of the men who wrote them."

She adds : " Too often, I think, children are required to write
before they have anything to say. Teach them to think and read
and talk without self-repression, and they will write because they
cannot help it.'*

In giving it as her opinion that *' children will educate themselves
under right conditions," that what they require are *' guidance and
sympathy far more than instruction," she made me diink of Rous-
seau's Entile^ and again when I came across the following pass^e on
language :

Language grows out of life, out of its needs and
experiences. At first my Httle pupil's mind was all but
vacant. She had been living in a world she could not
realize. Language* and knowledge are indissolubly con-
nected ; they are interdependent. Good work in language
presupposes and depends on a real knowledge of things.
As soon as Helen grasped the idea that everything hacTa
name, and that by means of the manual alphabet these
names could be transmitted fi-om one to another, I pro-
ceeded to awaken her further interest in the objects wnose
names she learned to spell with such evident joy. / never
taught her language for the purpose of teaching it ; but
invariably used language as a medium for the communica-
tion o( thought ; thus the learning of language was coincident
with the acquisition of knowledge. In order to use language
intelligently, one must have something to talk about, and
having something to talk about is the result of having had
experiences ; no amount of language training will enable

* Italia throughout this passage are Miss Sullivan's own.
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

OUT little children to use language with ease and fluencv
unless they have something clearly in their minds which
they wish to communicate, or unless we succeed in awaken-
ing in them a desire to know what is in the minds of
othen.

All diis leads me to your question about Lawrence — why I never
finished the study of him which I began in Paris some seventeen
years ago. But first let me reply to the other question — whether
I am not closer to Lawrence than to Joyce. Yes, indeed. Perhaps
too close, or rather I was too close when I began writing that magnum
opus— The World of Lawrence. Like the present book on which I
am engaged, it too began as a "small" volume. The publisher
of the Tropic of Cancer^ Jack Kahane, had asked me if I would not
write for him a hundred pages or so on " my great favorite,"
D. H. Lawrence. His thought was to bring out this ** plaquette "
before issuing the Cancer book, the publication of \^^ich had been
held up, for one reason and another, for three years or more. The
idea was certainly not to my liking, but I grudgingly consented.
By the time I had written a hundred pages I was so deep in the study
of Lawrence's work that I could no longer sec the forest for the
trees. There remain of this abortive effort at least several hundred
finished pages. There are a few hundred more which need revision,
and there are, of course, voluminous notes. Two things worked
together to frustrate the completion of this work : one, the urgent
desire to get on with my own story ; two, the confiision which
arose in my mind as to what indeed Lawrence did actually represent.
" Before a man studies Zen," says Ch*ing-yuan, " to him mountains
are mountains and waters are waters ; after he gets an insight into
the truth of Zen, through the instruction of a good master, mountains
to him are not mountains and waters are not waters ; but after this,
when he really attains to the abode of rest, mountains are once
more mountains and waters are waters."* Something of the sort
appHes to any approach to Lawrence. Today he is once again
what he was in the beginning, but knowing this, and being sure of
it, I no longer feel the need to air my views. All these critical and
interpretative studies of authors so vitally important (to us) are

* From Zen, by Alan W. Watts ; James Ladd Delkin, Stanford, California,
1948.

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

made in our own interest, I believe. Our labors only serve to make
us better understand ourselves. Our subjects seldom need our
defense or our brilliant interpretations. Usually they are dead by
the time we get to them. As for the pubHc, I am more and more
convinced that " they " too need less and less assistance or instruc-
tion ; it is more important, I do beHeve, for them to struggle on
their own.

As for Joyce, certainly I am indebted to him. Certainly I
was influenced by him. But my affinity is more with Lawrence,
obviously. My antecedents are the romantic, demonic, confes-
sional, subjective types of writer. It is Joyce's gift for language
which attracts me to him, but, as I pointed out in the essay called
" The Universe of Death," *I prefer the language of Rabelais to
that of Joyce. When all's said, however, Joyce remains the giant
in this field. He has no equal ; he is virtually a " monster."

It is very, very difficult, I find, to distinguish the real from the
imaginary influences. I have done my utmost to acknowledge
all influences, yet I realize only too well that in appraising my work
the writers to come will point out influences which I have ignored
and will discount other influences which I have stressed. You
mentioned in your letter The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The
author of that work is a man I seldom speak about. I read this
work in school, of course, together with The Lay of the Last Minstrel.
They are among the few books I enjoyed reading in school, I will
teU you. But the book I remember best, from school days, the book
which seems to have left an indelible impression upon me, though
I have never reread it, is Tennyson's Idylls of the King. The reason ?
King Arthur ! Only the other day, in reading a letter by the famous
Gladstone to Schhemann, the discoverer of Troy and Mycenae,
I noticed that he spoke of SchHemann as belonging to another age,
an age of faith, an age of chivalry. Certainly this man, this very
capable, practical-minded business man, did more for history than
the whole gang of flatulent " historians." All because of a youthful
love of and belief in Homer. I mention Gladstone's letter, a noble
one, because whenever I touch upon the words faith, youth, chivalry,
a flame Hghts up in me. I said a moment ago that my true arboreal

*From The Cosmological Eye, New Directions, New York, 193 8.
Editions Poetry London, London.
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

descent was such and such. But what is it that nourishes and sustains
this species of writer ? The heroic, the legendary ! In a word, the
hterature of imagination and deed. When I mention the name
King Arthur I think of a world which is still aHve though sunk
from sight ; I think of it, indeed, as the real, the eternal world,
because in it imagination and deed are one, love and justice one.
Today it would seem as if this world of Arthur's time belonged
exclusively to the scholar, but it is resuscitated each time a boy
or girl is inflamed by contact with it.

And this leads me to say how woefully mistaken are those who
beheve that certain books, because universally acknowledged as
" masterpieces," are the books which alone have power to inspire
and nourish us. Every lover of books can name dozens of titles
which, because they unlock his soul, because they open his eyes to
reahty, are for him the golden books. It matters not what evaluation
is made of these by scholars and critics, by pundits and authorities :
for the man who is touched to the quick by them they are supreme.
We do not ask of one who opens our eyes by what authority he
acts ; we do not demand his credentials. Nor should we be forever
grateful and reverent towards our benefactors, since each of us
has the power in turn to awaken others and does in fact do so,
often unwittingly. The wise man, the holy man, the true scholar,
learns as much from the criminal, the beggar, the whore, as he does
from the saint, the teacher, or the Good Book.

Yes, I would indeed be grateful if you would translate one or
two tales from the fabliaux. I have read almost nothing of this
literature. Which reminds me that, although I have received many
books from the list I compiled, no one has yet sent me a good
book on Gilles de Rais or on Saladin, two figures in whom I am
tremendously interested. There are certain names one almost
never encounters in our Hterary weeklies. The great difference
between European Hterary weeklies and American ones lies in the
emptiness with regard to Hterary names and events which character-
izes them. In European weekHes the void is clustered or spangled
with constellations : in a single column, for instance, of Le Goeland
(published in Parame-en-Bretagne) one can run across a dozen
or more celebrated names, both past and contemporary, which
we never hear of Even in Volonte, which is not a strictly Hterary

203

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFB

periodical, I find articles about men, books, events that I never
sec mention of in our papers or reviews. In the days when I worked
in the financial district of New York — for the Everlasting Cement
Company — I recall what a pleasure it was, as I made my way to
the elevated train at the Brooklyn Bridge, to see stacked up at
the foot of that interminable flight of stairs the latest issue of Sim-
pUcissimus. In those days we had at least two excellent magazines
in this country — The Little Review and The Dial. Today there is
not one good magazine in the whole bloody country. Nor can I
pass on without a word about Transition in whose pages I discovered
the most exciting new foreign names, among them one I can never
forget — Gottfiied Benn.

But to come back to Saladin and Gilles de Rais, than whom
there could hardly be two more opposite types — I have inquired
of our libraries as to what books are available concerning them
and I have gathered a few titles, mostly by English or American
authors. These titles, however, do not incite me to look up the
books ; they have that immediate, sensational appeal which is so
eminendy American. I am searching not so much for scholarly
as for poetic interpretation. In the case of Gilles de Rais, I presume
that the most serious studies have been made by the psychoanalysts.
But I do not want a psychoanalytical study of Gilles de Rais. If I
had to choose, I would prefer a CathoHc inquiry into the workings
of this strange soul.

Speaking of the books I am still searching for, I ought to add
that I also want a book about the Children's Crusade. Do you know
of a good one ? I remember reading about this altogether unique
episode in history as a child ; I remember my extreme bewilderment
accompanied by a feeling of pain such as I had never experienced.
Since childhood I have stumbled only upon fleeting references to the
subject. Now, with the reopening of my early past, I feel that I
must look into it again.

As for Restif de la Bretonne — Monsieur Nicolas and Les Nuits de
Paris— no one has yet sent me these either. I am expecting any
day now a book about Restif by an American attache stationed in
Jidda ; he has written me several letters telling me of the remarkable
affinities between the author of the Tropics and this singular French
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

writer. You can imagine how curious I am to savor the blood of
this strange creature.

In addition to books I have not asked for, I receive many that I
do want ; in fact, by now I must have received about two-thirds
of the titles listed. One that I pounced on immediately that I
received it was a biography of George Alfred Henty, my favorite
author when a boy. It is not a brilliant work (the author is G. Man-
ville Fenn) but it serves the purpose. It afforded me, after waiting
some forty odd years, the excruciating pleasure of gazing upon
the face of my beloved author. I must say that the photo which
serves as the frontispiece is in no wise disappointing or deceptive.
There he is, my dear Henty (he was always just " Henty " to me),
large as life, with a good massive head, flowing beard 4 la Whit-
man, a big broad nose, almost Russian, and a frank, genial, kindly
gaze to his countenance. Though they do not resemble one another,
he nevertheless reminds me strongly of another idol. Rider Haggard.
They belong to the " manly " side of British men of letters. Rugged,
stalwart, honest and honorable men, quite reticent about them-
selves, fair and upright in their dealings, capable in many ways,
interested in many pursuits besides writing : active men, good,
soHd bulwarks, as we say. In demeanor and deportment, in the
variety and scope of their activities, they had much in common.
From an early age they both saw the rough side of Ufe. Both were
great travellers, spent considerable time in remote places. Even
in their methods of work they had a great many points in common.
Though they wrote fast and prodigiously, they devoted much time
to the accumulation, preparation and analysis of their material.
They both had the ** chronicler " strain. They possessed imagina-
tion and intuition to a high degree. Yet no men were sterner
realists, more immersed in life. Both enjoyed a certain affluence,
too, on reaching middle Hfe. And both had the good fortime to
be aided by very capable secretaries, or amanuenses, to whom
they dictated their books. (How I envy them that !)

I realize that Henty is a writer who may not be known to you
at all ; but he was known to American and English boys, and was
probably regarded as highly by them as Jules Verne, Fenimore
Cooper, Captain Mayne Reid or Marryat. But let me quote you
a few of Fenn's observations about this man Henty, his work, and

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

the reasons for his great success. They strike a sympathetic note.
A boy, he states, does not want juvenile Hterature. ** His aim is to
become a man and read what men do and have done. Hence the
great success of George Henty's works. They are essentially manly,
and he [Henty] used to say that he wanted his boys to be bold,
straightforward and ready to play a young man's part, not to be
milksops." (Henty was practically a confirmed invaHd during
early youth — ^he spent most of his days in bed. Which explains
his early passion for books : he read everything that came to hand.
It also explains the acute development of his imagination ...
and his good health in later hfe, for only the man who has started
life as a weakling prizes good health and knows how to guard it.)

•• Unconsciously," says Fenn, ** he was building up a
greater success for his boys' books by enlisting on their
behalf the suffrages of that great and powerful body of
buyers of presents who has the selection of their gifts.
By this body is meant our boys' instructors, who, in
conning the publishers' hsts, would come upon some
famous name for the hero of the story and exclaim : * Ha !
history — that's safe ! * In this way Henty Hnked himself
with the great body of teachers who joined with him
hand in hand ; hence it was that the book-writer who kept
up for so many years his wonderful supply of two, three
and often four boys' books a year, full of soUd interest
and striking natural adventure, taught more lasting history
to boys than all the schoolmasters of his generation."

But enough on this score. I find it strange, I must admit, to
discover what " soHd characters " my early idols possessed, to learn
that they were men of affairs, interested in agrarian reforms, miHtary
strategy, yachting, big game hunting, political intrigues, archaeology,
symbolism and so on. How startling to read of Henty, for example,
that his motto could well have been : ** God, the Sovereign, and
the People ! " What a contrast to the characters who are later to
influence me, so many of them " pathological," or, as Max Nordau
would say — " degenerate." Even dear old Walt, the man of the
great outdoors, the poet with a cosmic sweep, is now studied from
the ** pathological " side. Fenn saying that " the neurotic was as
far firom Henty as are the poles asunder " sounds almost comical
to me now. The word " neurotic " was not even known in Henty's
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

day. Hamsun used to flaunt the word " neurasthenic." Today
it is " psychotic " — or else " schizophrenic." Today I Who writes
for boys today ? Seriously, I mean. What do they feed on, the
youths of today ? A most interesting question ...

Last night I had great difficulty falling asleep. This happens to
me frequently since I am engaged on this book. The reason is
simple : I am inundated with such a flood of material, I have such
a tremendous choice, that it is difficult for me to decide what not
to write about. Everything seems pertinent. Everything I touch
reminds me of the inexhaustible stream of contributory influences
which have shaped my intellectual being. As I reread a book I
think of the time, place and circumstances known to my former
selves. Conrad says somewhere that a writer only begins to live
after he has begun to write. A partial truth. I know what he meant,
Conrad, but — the life of a creator is not the only Hfe nor perhaps
the most interesting one which a man leads. There is a time for
play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying
fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its way, when one
scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean — ^when boredom
seems the very stuff of life.

Speaking of the Everlasting Cement Company a while ago got
me to recalling the wonderful fellows who worked with me in that
office at 30 Broad Street, New York. Suddenly I was so charged
with recollections that I grabbed my notebook and began Hsting
the names of these individuals and the trifling episodes connected
with them. I saw them all clearly and distinctly — Eddie Rink,
Jimmy Tiemey, Roger Wales, Frank Selinger, Ray Wetzler,
Frank McKenna, Mister Blehl (my bete noir), Barney something-
or-other (a mere mouse of a man), Navarro, the vice-president,
whom we encountered only in going to the lavatory; TaHaferro,
the peppery Southerner from Virginia, who would repeat over
the phone a dozen times a day, " Not Taliaferro — ToUiver ! "
But the one on whom my memory fastened was a fellow I never
once thought of from the day I left the company — at the age of
twenty-one. Harold Street was his name. We were boon com-
panions. Jotting down his name, I wrote alongside of it — for the
record ! — " vacant days." That is how I associate his name with
mine — ^by the remembrance of blank, idle, happy days spent with

207

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFB

him in the suburb called Jamaica. We must have had somethiag
in common, but what it was I no longer remember. I know
definitely that he was not interested in books, nor in bicycle riding,
as I was. I would go to his home, a large, rambling, lugubrious
sort of faded mansion, where he Hved with a grandmother, and the
day would pass as in a dream. Not the faintest remembrance of
what we talked about or how we passed the time. But to visit
him in those quiet, sombre surroundings was a balm to me, that
I do remember. I guess I envied him the quietude of his life. As
far as I could detect, he had no problems. And that was utterly
strange to me — because I was riddled with them. Harold was
one of those calm, steady, poised young men who know how
to get oa in the world, how to adapt themselves, how to avoid
pain and grief It was that which attracted me to him. The deeper
reasons for this attraction I will undoubtedly uncover when I go
into this period more deeply — ^in Nexus — ^which, as you know,
I have not even started to write. Enough, however, to call attention
to those " vacant '* periods in which, fortunately for us, we are not
even concerned to know who we are, much less what we will do
in Ufe. I know one thing definitely, it was the prelude to my break
with the family, my break with office routine ; the wanderlust
had come over me and soon I was to say goodbye to all my friends
as well as my family, to start out for the Golden West (of Puccini
rather than the gold seekers). " No more books ! " I said to myself
'* Done with the intellectual life." And then, on the fruit ranch
at Chula Visu, California, whom do I pal up with but that cowboy,
BiU Parr of Montana, who has an itch to read and who takes long
walks with me after work to discuss our favorite authors. And
it is because of my affection for Bill Parr that I happen upon Emma
Goldman in San Diego and, without in the least intending it, am
swung back again into the world of books, via Nietzsche first of
all, then Bakunin, Kropotkin, Most, Strindberg, Ibsen, and all the
celebrated European dramatists. So it turns, the wheel of destiny !
Last night I could not fall asleep. I had just been reading another
old favorite — Edgar Saltus — an American author you probably
never heard of I was reading The Imperial Purple, one of those
books which I thought had taught me something about "style."
The night before I had finished Emil Ludwig's biography of Hein-
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LBTTBR TO PIBRRB LBSDAIN

rich Schliemann, which nude me dizzy, dizzy because it is almost
incredible to think what this man accomplished in one lifetime.
Yes, I know about JuHus Caesar, Hannibal, Alexander, Napoleon,
Thomas Edison, Rene CaiU^ (of Timbuctoo fame), and Gandhi
and scores of other " active ** men. They all led incredible Uvcs.
But somehow this man SchHemann, a grocer's boy who becomes
a great merchant, who learns eighteen languages "on the side,"
as it were, and speaks and writes them fluendy, this man who all
his life conducted a heavy correspondence in his own hand — and
made copies of each and every letter by hand ! — this man who
begins his career in Russia, as exporter and importer, who all his
Ufe is traveling between distant points, who rises at four in the
morning usually, rides horseback to the sea (at Phaleron) takes a
swim winter or summer, is at his desk or at the excavations having
a second breakfast at eight a.m., who reads Homer in season and
out, and towards the later years refuses to speak even modem
Greek to his wife but insists on using the Greek of Homer's day,
who writes his letters in the language of the man whom he is
addressing, who unearths the greatest treasures any man has ever
found, who, et cetera, et cetera, . . . well how can one sleep on
putting such a book down i Order, discipb'ae, sobriety, perseverance,
doggedness, authoritativeness, how German he was ! And this
man had made himself a citizen of the United States, residing for
a while in San Francisco and later in Indianapolis. Utterly cos-
mopoUtan and yet thoroughly German. A Greek at heart and
still a Teuton. The most amazing man imaginable. Uncovering
the ruins of Troy, Mycenae, Tiryns and other places, and almost
beating Sir Arthur Evans to the labyrinth of the Minotaur. Losing
out because the peasant who was ready to sell him the site of Knossus
had lied to him about the number of oUve trees on the property.
Only 888 instead of 2,500. What a man! I waded through his fat tomes
on Troy and Mycenae ; I read the autobiographical pages he
inserted in one of these volumes. And then I decided on Ludwig*s
book for an over-all picture of the man.

What a task for the biographer ! Twenty thousand papers Herr
Ludwig examined. Listen to his words :

First of all, there was the long series of diaries and note-
books which he kept and wrote up almost continuously

209

THE BOOKS IN MY tIFE

from the twentieth year until the sixty-ninth and last year
of his Hfe. There were his business records and account
books, family letters, legal documents, passports and
diplomas, huge volumes of his linguistic studies, down to
his very exercises in Russian and Arabic script. Besides
all this, there were newspaper cuttings firom all quarters
of the globe, lists with historical data and dictionaries of
his own compiling in a dozen languages. Since he preserved
everything, I found, along with the most illuminating
memoranda, an invitation to attend a concert in aid of a
poor widow. Every paper was dated in his own hand-
writing.

I cannot leave the subject without reference to one humorous
and pathetic incident concerning Agamemnon. Towards the end
of his days, discussing for the thousandth time, perhaps, the question
of whether it was or was not Agamemnon's body which he had
exhumed, SchUemann exclaimed to his young assistant, Dorpfeld :
" So this is not Agamemnon's body ; these are not his ornaments ?
All right, let's call him Schulze ! "

Yes, each night I go to bed and digest the book or books I have
been reading that evening. (I have only two hours at the most
in a day to do all my reading.) One night it is Henty's life, the
next Rider Haggard's two-volume autobiography, the next a
little book on Zen, the next Helen Keller's Hfe, the next a study of
the Marquis de Sade, the next a book on Dostoievsky, either by
Janko Lavrin (another old favorite and eye opener) or John Cowper
Powys ; I go in rapid succession from one Ufe to another — Rabelais,
Aretimo, Ouspensky — ^then Hermann Hesse (Voyage en Orient)
and his Siddhartha (two English versions of it I am obliged to read
and compare with the German and French), EUe Faure (The Dance
Over Fire and Water)^ with sideswipes at certain passages in The
History of Art, The Black Death, Boccaccio, Le Cocu Magnifique,
et c'est bien magnifique, comme je vous ai dit par carte-postale.
Let me stop a moment here. Crommelynck ! A Flemish genius.
Another John Ford, in my eyes. A dramatist who has contributed
something altogether original to the repertory of immortal drama.
And on my favorite theme— jealousy. Othello ? You can have it !
I prefer Crommelynck. Proust was wonderfiil, in his labyrinthine
way. But Crommelynck reaches the absolute. I don't sec how

2IO

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

it is possible to add anything more to tliis great theme. (My respect
to your colleague, J. Dypreau, for his excellent review of the recent
presentation of this play in Brussels. When will we see it here, I
wonder, if ever ?)

Yes, I cannot sleep nights after reading these marvelous books.
Each one is sufficient to set a man's head spinning for a week. Some
are new to me, others old. They overlap and intertwine. They
complement one another, even when they seem most disparate.
All is one. Ah, what was that line in Faure I wanted to remember ?
I have it. " The artist aims at a final order." True. Too true, alas.
" The order is in us, and not elsewhere," he says. " And it does not
reign elsewhere, only if we have the power to make it reign in us."

One of my readers, a young French psychoanalyst, sends me an
excerpt from one of Berdyaev's books in which the latter speaks of
the chaos in the present world which I have succeeded in rendering,
and then adds that this chaos is also in me. As if I did not know !
" The artist aims at a final order." Bien dit et vrai, meme s'il essaie
de ne rien donner que le chaos qui reside en lui-meme. Ca, c*est
mon avis. Aux autres a denicher ou la v6rk6 ou le complexe. La,
je reste, moi.

To this let me add that, in writing several book-seller fiiends
of mine for the books I wanted, I received in reply substantially the
same gratuitous slap in the face from all : " Never saw such a
fantastic medley of titles ! " As if, in selecting from all the books
I had read in the last forty years, I should have chosen for them a
certain pleasing and inteUigible sequence of titles ! Where they
see a farrago I see order and meaning. My order, my meaning.
My continuity. Who is to say what I should have read, and in
what order ? How absurd ! The more I uncover my past, as it
reveals itself through the books I have read, the more logic, the
more order, the more discipline I discover in my life. It makes
grand sense, one's Hfe, even when it resembles a quagmire. Certainly
no Creator could have ordained the devious and manifold paths
one treads, the choices and decisions one makes. Can you imagine
a ledger in which the vagaries of every single mortal that ever Hved
were recorded i Would it not be insane to keep such a log book ?
No, I am sure that whatever difficulties we mortals have in finding
(>ur way, the Creator must have similar and more fantastic ones.

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

And if, as I solemnly believe, it all makes sense to Him, why can
it not also make sense to us, at least as regards our own individual
lives ?

If I cannot sleep nights it is not because of the books I am reading,
for the extent of my reading is infinitesimal compared to what a
bookworm devours in a day. (Think of Napoleon at St. Helena
ordering up stacks of books each day, devouring them like a tape-
worm, and calling for more, more !) No, it is not the books alone,
it is the memories associated with them, the memories of former
lives, as I said before. I can see these former selves as clearly as if
I were looking at my many fiiends in turn. And yet, here is a fact
I simply cannot get over — the man I was when I first read Mysteries,
let us say, seems to be hardly a whit different from the man I was
yesterday, the man I still am, let us suppose. At least I am no different
in my appreciation of and enthusiasm for the author of this book.
(That he was a " collaborator " during the last War, for example,
means absolutely nothing to me.) Even if, as a writer, I am aware
with each rereading of the "defects" or, to be more kind, ** the
weaknesses " of my favorite author, the man in me still responds
to him, to his language, to his temperament, just as warmly. I
may have grown — or I may not either ! — in intellectual stature,
but thank God, I say to myself, I have not altered in my essential
being. It must be, I assume, that an appeal made to one*s soul is
final and irrevocable. And it is with the soul that we grasp the
essence of another being, not with the mind, not even with the
heart.

One day I read in the French paper Combat a letter dated as late
as 1928 firom H. G. Wells to James Joyce. It was a letter to make
one blush with shame for a feUow author. It reminded me of a
communication in the same vein, but in better spirit, from Strind-
berg to Gauguin, anent the latter's (new) Tahitian paintings. But
listen to the tone of the pompous Englishman of letters : " Vous
croyez sans doute a la chastet^, i la puret^ et i un dieu personnel ;
c*cst pourquoi vous finissez toujours par vous repandre en cris
de con, de merde et d'enfer."

" Oh, Henry, what beautifiil golden teeth you have ! " exclaimed
my four-year-old daughter the other morning on climbing into bed
with me. C'est ainsi <)uc je m'appro(:he des gpuvres de mes confi-^res,
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

I sec how beautiful arc their golden teeth, not how ugly or artificial
they are . . .

But there are little things, trifling personal things, which also
keep me awake nights after finishing a book. For example, time
and again I am struck by the fact — and I hope you will not think
this egotistical of me — that so many of the writers or artists I adore
seem to have ended their Uves just about the time I was being bom.
(Rimbaud, Van Gogh, Nietzsche, Whitman, to name just a few.)
What do I make of this i Nothing, actually. But it serves to bemuse
mc. So I was just making my way out of the womb, protestingly,
when they were laying themselves to rest ! All that they fought
and died for I have to repeat, in one way or another. Their
experience, their wisdom of Hfe, their teachings, nothing do I
inherit by virtue of their immediate precedence. More, I must wait
twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years before I even hear their names
mentioned. Another thing about these figures — I am vitally
interested in knowing how they came to their end ; whether
through accident, ilbiess, suicide or chagrin. Sometimes it is the
circumstances attending their birth which fascinate me. (Jesus
was not the .only one to be bom in a manger, I find. Nor was
Swedenborg the only one to predict the day and hour of his own
death.) The few who were comfortable and affluent during their
lives are vastly oumumbered by the hordes who knew nothing
but sorrow and misery, who were starved, tortured, persecuted,
betrayed, reviled, imprisoned, banished, beheaded, hanged or
drawn and quartered. Around almost every man of genius there
clusters a constellation of similar geniuses ; rare are those who are
bom out of time. They all belong to and are part of bloody epochs.
Those in the tradition, as we say, Hve and die according to tradition.
I think of Nikolai V. Gogol for some reason — the one who wrote
The Diary of a Madman, the author of the Cossack Iliad — who
declares towards the end of one of his stories : "A gloomy place,
this world, gentlemen ! ** He, Gogol, settles down in Rome, of
all places, fearing to remain in Holy Russia. (Have you noticed,
incidentally, in what strange, foreign, and often remote and desolate
places our scribes write their famous books i) Dead Souls was
completed in Rome. The second volume Gogol burned a few
days before his death ; the third was never begun. Thus, in spite

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of a pilgrimage to Palestine as a holy penitent, this wretched, con-
fused, despondent being, who had hoped to write a Divine Comedy
for his people, one that would contain ** a message," perishes
miserably far from home. The man who has made miUions laugh
and weep, who had a most decided influence on the Russian (and
other) writers to come, is labelled before his death as **a preacher
of the knout, an apostle of ignorance, a defender of obscurantism
and darkest oppression.*** And by a former admirer ! But how
wonderful, how prophetic is that passage on the troika which
ends the first volume ! Janko Lavrin, from whom I have drawn
the above observations, says that in this passage Gogol ** addresses
Russia with a question which all her great authors have been asking
since — ^asking in vain.** Here is the passage . . .

Russia, are you not speeding along like a fiery and
matchless troika ? Beneath you the road is smoke, the
bridges thunder, and everything is left far behind. At
your passage the onlooker stops amazed as by a divine
miracle. * Was that not a flash of lightning i * he asks.
What is this surge so full of terror » And what is this
force unknown impelling these horses never seen before ?
Ah, you horses, horses — ^what horses ! Your manes are
whirlwind ! And are your veins not tingling like a quick
ear ? Descending from above you have caught the note
of the famihar song ; and at once, in unison, you strain
your chests of bronze and, with your hooves barely skim-
ming the earth, you are transformed into arrows, into
straight lines winging through the air, and on you rush
under divine inspiration ! . . . Russia, where are you
flying i Answer me. There is no answer. The bells are
tinkling and filling the air with their wonderful pealing ;
the air is rent and thundering as it turns to wind ; every-
thing on earth comes flying past and, looking askance at
her, other peoples and States move aside and make way.f

Yes, it is a memorable passage, prophetic, indubitably so. But
for me it evokes other emotions and reactions too. In these words
— and especially when it comes to, ** Answer me ! There is no
answer." — I seem to hear the sonorous music of so many famous
exiles, all singing the same tune, even "<jvhen they hated the fath^r-s

* See From Pushkin to Mayakovsky, by Janko Lavrin ; Sylyan |*rcss, London,
1948.

t Translation by George Reavey.

314

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAlM

land or the motherland. " I am here. You arc there." That is
what they are saying. " I know my country better than you. I
love it more, even though I spit upon it. I am the prodigal son
and I shall return with honor one day — if it is not too late. But
I shall not stir from here until you make me an honorary citizen
of my home town. I am dying of loneliness but my pride is greater
than any loneliness. I have a message for you, but it is not the
time now to reveal it." And so on . . .

I know these hearts full of anguish, full of despair, full of such
mingled love and hate as to burst a man asunder.

When I urged you to read with special attention the piece called
" The Brooklyn Bridge " (in The Cosmologkal Eye), perhaps it
was something of all this that I had in mind. You are right about
Black Spring. You put your finger on the very line which illustrates
my point : " I am grateful to America for having made me realize
my needs ..." But did I not say, too : " I am a man of the Old
World i " Those miserable, niggardly reviews you speak of—
let us not waste time discussing them. Who will care fifty years
from now what Robert Kemp said, or Edmund Wilson, or any
of this gang ?

I am back in America. My days are fiiU. Too fiill. At 6.20 sharp
every morning the cock crows. The cock is Tony, my litde son.
From then on not a moment's rest. Often I begin the day by
changing his diaper and fetching him a zwieback. Then comes
Valentin — " the mystery of God," as she one day announced herself
to be. Sometimes I am digging in the garden before breakfast,
extending the interminable shallow trenches into which I put back
what we have taken from the soil, like a good Chinese peasant.
Breakfast over, I rush to my studio and begin answering the mail :
every day fifteen or twenty letters to answer. Before the sun sets
I usually take the children for a walk. If I go alone I come home
on the trot, my head swarming with ideas. It is only when I enter
the forest that I am truly alone, only then do I get the chance to
empty my mind and recharge the battery. Some days are broken
up. by the arrival of visitors. Occasionally they pull up one after
another, like railroad trains. I have hardly said goodbye to one
van load than another pulls up. Many of these visitors have not
even read my books. " WeVe heard about you ! " they say. As

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THB BOOKS IN MY LIFE

if that constituted a warrant for encroaching upon a man's precious

tune

Between times, as it were, I write. If I can put in two to three '

hours a day at my work I consider myself lucky. This letter to

you, for instance, I began yesterday, and will probably continue

tomorrow. It does me good to write a letter which is not a response

to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated

in me like the waters of a reservoir. I have owed you this letter

for a long time. You have evoked it without knowing it. How I

loathe those letters from college students who are about to write

a thesis on some aspect of my work, or on the work of some friend

of mine. The questions they ply, the demands they make ! And

to what end i What could be more useless, more a waste of time

and energy, than a college thesis i (It is not every day we get a

thesis such as Celine wrote on Semmelweiss !) Some, in utter

naivet^, have the cheek to ask me to explain my whole works to

them — in a few brief lines. Sometimes, resting on the spade, I look

up from the trench I am digging — ^it is beginning, by the way, to

look like those breastworks which were thrown up in the Balkan

wars ! — sometimes, I say, looking up at the huge blue bowl of the

sky in which the vultures are careening, or looking out to sea where

perhaps not a ship is to be sighted, I wonder what is the use of it

all, why carry on this mad activity i It is not that I feel lonely.

I doubt if I have known that feeling more than two or three times

in my whole hfe. No, I wonder simply — to what end ? You write,

others write me likewise, that my work should be disseminated,

that it contains something of value for the world. I wonder. How

good it would feel not to do anything at all for a while ! Just ** set "

and ponder. Twiddle my thumbs. Nothing more. As it is, the

only way I can take a vacation is to trump up a dubious malaise

and take to bed for the day. I can He for hours without looking

at a book. Just he flat on my back and dream. What a luxury !

Sure, if I had the choice I would rather be spending my ** vacation **

journeying to some distant realm — ^Timbuaoo, let us say, or Mecca,

or Lhasa. But since I cannot make the physical voyage I make

imaginary ones. As companions I choose a few after my own

heart — Dostoievsky, Ramakrishna, EUe Faure, Blaise Cendrars,

Jean Giono, or some unknown devil or saint whom I rout out

216

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

of his Himalayan fastness. Sometimes I get well of a sudden-
all I needed was a change, an interlude — and jumping into my
clothes I run down the line to visit my friend Schatz or my friend
Emil White. (Both are painters, but the latter isn't aware of it yet.
He doesn't know what to call himself, but every day he turns out
another Persian miniature of Big Sur.) To see another American
writer I would have to travel God knows how many miles.

Which reminds me that the other evening I read a most interest-
ing and revelatory letter by Sherwood Anderson (January 2, 1936)
to Theodore Dreiser. It was precipitated by the suicide of Hart
Crane and Vachel Lindsay, two well-known American poets,
" For the last year or two," Anderson begins, " I have had some-
thing in my mind that you and I should have spoken about and
during the last year or two it has been sharpened in my mind by
the suicide of fellows like Hart Crane, Vachel Lindsay and others,
to say nothing of the bitterness of a Masters." (Edgar Lee Masters,
author of Spoon River Anthology.) " If there has been a betrayal in
America," he goes on to say, " I think it is our betrayal of each
other. I do not believe that we — ^and by the word * we * I mean
artists, writers, singers, etc. — ^have really stood by each other."
He goes on to say that he has been thinking of putting his thoughts
on the subject into a general letter or pamphlet to be called " Ameri-
can Man to American Man." He speaks of our loneliness for one
another. He says that it might help for all of us " to return to the
old habit of letter-writing between man and man that has at certain
periods existed in the world." And then he adds this :

For example, Ted, suppose that every morning when
you go to your desk to work you would begin your
day's work by writing, let's say, one letter to one other
man working in the same field as you are. Suppose we
did, by this effort, produce less as writers. There is probably
too much being produced. I am suggesting this as the
only way out I can see in the situation. It isn't that I want
you to write to me. t could give you names and addresses
of others who need you and whom you need. I think it
possible to build up a kind of network of relationships,
something closer say between writers and painters and
songmakers, etc, etc . . . Further on — he continues this
letter on the following day — ^hc writes : Can you bcUevc

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

that Vachel Lindsay would have taken . . . [suppression
of text by the editor, not me !] if on that day he had got
even two or three letters from some of the rest of us ?*

I don*t know what you will think of this idea of Anderson s.
It may strike you as jejune. But it appeals to me, being also an
American. By that I mean that we Americans are always ready
to try a thing out, even if we are not convinced beforehand that
it will work. But as I was saying to a young writer who Uves
nearby and who is putting the idea into practice, it is a projert
better suited for young and unknown writers than older ones.
Why shouldn't young and unknown writers communicate with
one another about their needs, their desires, their hopes and dreams ?
Why shouldn't they create a network of their own, a soUd nucleus,
a bulwark of defense against the indifference of the world, the
indifference of older writers who have arrived, against the indif-
ference, stupidity and blindness of editors and publishers particularly ?
An older writer, I have noticed, is tempted to dissuade rather than
encourage a young writer. He knows the traps, the pitfalls, the
deceptions, the heart-aches which beset the novice. He is apt to be
disillusioned about the value or necessity of any creative work,
his own included.

I so firmly beheve that the blind should aid the blind, the deaf
the deaf, and the young writers the young writers. Moreover,
we the older ones have more to learn from the young than they
from us. " Fools rush in where angels fear to tread." Aye ! And
lucky it be so. There was a pompous old scientist here the other
day who, arguing with a young friend of mine about the coming
voyage to the moon, insisted that it was not the time to think
seriously about such ventures, that indeed to discuss such matters
before the time was ripe, did more harm than good. What arrant
nonsense ! As if we were to sit back and wait until the men of
science had made fiill preparation and provision, until they said
"Go ! " Would anything ever happen if that were the procedure ?

But to come back to Sherwood Anderson and his good friend
Dreiser. I rather think I forgot to include these two men among
my " influences," when I wrote on this subject earlier. I had the
good fortune to meet Anderson just a few years before he died.

* The Portable Sherwood Anderson ; The Viking Press, New York, 1949.
218

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

It was shordy after my return from Europe. It happened that I was
staying at the same hotel he was. I made a date to meet him at a
nearby bar, and when I arrived I found to my deHght that John
Dos Passes was sitting with him. My first impression, on greeting
them, was — ^how odd to be sitting with two celebrated American
writers ! I felt as though I should study these ** birds." (In Paris,
of course, I had met a few American writers, but they were so
close to me, so intimate, that I never regarded them as " men of
letters." Before that, during my whole period of apprenticeship
in America, I can hardly recall one writer of eminence, one of our
own writers, I mean, that I had met and talked to.)

Of course this feeUng of critical aloofiiess was immediately dis-
sipated by the warmth and friendliness emanating from these two
men. They were very, very human and at once put me at ease.
I mention this because, finding myself back in America again, I also
found myself back in my old attitude of the novice, the unknown
writer. Neither of them had read my books, I am quite sure, but
tfiey knew my name. We got along splendidly. I was intoxicated
especially by Anderson's storytelling gift. I was also impressed
by his Americanism, though in appearance he was anything but
the typical American. Dos Passos too struck me as very American,
though he was quite a cosmopolite. The fact is, I soon observed
that they were very much at home in their own country. They
liked America. They had traveled over every part of it, too.

I say I was deUghted to fmd Dos Passos there in the bar. Yes,
because oddly enough it was the reading of one of his early con-
tributions to a magazine — The Seven Arts, I think — that led me
to beUeve I might also become a writer one day. I had of course
read a number of his early books, such as Three Soldiers, Manhattan
Transfer and Orient Express. I sensed the poet in him, as I had the
bom storyteller in Sherwood Anderson. *

But before either of them had swum into my ken I had read and
adored Theodore Dreiser. I read everything of his, in those early
days, that I could lay hands on. I even modelled my fint book on
a book of his called Twelve Men. I loved his brother, too, whom
he portrayed so tenderly in this book : Paul Dressier, the song
writer. Dreiser, I need hardly tell you, gave a tremendous impetus
%o the young W|:iters of his day. His big novels, like Jenny Gerhardt,

219

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

The Titan, The Finander^wt call them "huge, cumbersome and
unwieldy" today — carried a tremendous impact. They were
sombre, realistic, dense, but never dull — at least to me. They were
passionate novels, saturated with the color and the drama of Ameri-
can life ; they issued direct from the guts and were warmed by
the very heart's blood of the man. So sincere do they seem now
that men like Sinclair Lewis, Hemingway, even Faulkner, appear
artificial by comparison. Here was a man who had anchored him-
self in midstream. As a reporter he had seen life close up— -the
seamy side, naturally. He was not bitter, he was honest. As honest
as any American writer we have ever had. And that is what he
taught me, if anything — the abiHty to look at life honestly. There
was another quaUty he had and that was fullness. I know that
Americans have the reputation of writing thick books, but they
are not always fulsome books. I spoke a while back of the difference
in ** emptiness " between European writers and Americans. The
emptiness of the European, as I feel it, is in the basic ore of his
material ; the emptiness of the American is in his spiritual or cul-
tural heritage. The ** fullness of the void " which is so manifest
in Chinese art seems to be unknown in the Western world, both
in Europe and America. When I spoke of the thrill it gave me to
glance at a European review or hterary weekly, I meant to indicate
the pleasure which the artist of the garret has when he watches a
peasant stir a pot of thick stew, a stew which has been kept going,
so to speak, for a week or more. It is nothing for a French writer
to lard his article with dazzling names and references ; it is part
of his daily Hterary fare. Our critical and interpretative essays are
so meagre in this respect that one would think we emerged from
barbarism only yesterday. But when it comes to the novel, to
spilling out the raw experience of Hfe, the American is apt to give
the European a jolt. Perhaps the American writer Hves closer to
the roots, imbibes more of what is called experience. I am not sure.
Besides, it is dangerous to generalize. I can cite a number of novels,
by French writers particularly, the like of which for content, raw
material, slag, rich ore, profusion and profundity of experience
we have no coimterpart for. In general, however, I have the impres-
sion that the European writer begins from the roof, or the firma-
ment, if you hke. His particular racial, cultural firmament—not

?30

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

the firmament. It's as though he worked with a triple-decked
clavier. Sometimes he remains on the upper levels, his voice gets
thin, his material is predigested. The great European, of course,
works on all levels at once ; he knows how to pull every organ
stop and he is a master with the pedals.

But let us approach the subject from another angle. Let us com-
pare two men who ought really not to be compared, since one was
a novelist and the other a poet : I mean Dostoievsky and Whitman.
I choose them arbitrarily because for me they represent the peaks
in modem Hterature. Dostoievsky was infinitely more than a
novelist, of course, just as Whitman was greater than a poet. But
the difference between the two, in my eyes at least, is that Whitman,
though the lesser artist, though not as profoimd, saw bigger than
Dostoievsky. He had the cosmic sweep, yes. We speak of him as
** the great democrat." Now that particular appellation could never
be given Dostoievsky — ^not because of his religious, pohtical and
social beUefs but because Dostoievsky was' more and less than
a " democrat." (I hope it is understood that when I use the word
** democrat " I mean to signify a unique self-sufficient type of
individual whose allegiance no government has yet arisen big
enough, wise enough, tolerant enough, to include as citizen.) No,
Dostoievsky was human in that " all too human " sense of Nietzsche.
He wrings our withers when he unrolls his scroll of Hfe. Whitman
is impersonal by comparison ; he takes in the crowd, the masses,
the great swarms of humanity. His eyes are constantly fixed on
the potential, the divine potential, in man. He talks brotherhood ;
Dostoievsky talks fellowship. Dostoievsky stirs us to the depths,
causes us to shudder and grimace, to wince, to close our eyes at
times. Not Whitman. Whitman has the faculty of looking at
everything, divine or demonic, as part of the ceaseless HeracHtean
stream. No end, no beginning. A loft)% sturdy wind blows through
his poems. There is a healing quality to his vision.

We know that the great problem with Dostoievsky was God.
God was no problem for Whitman ever. He was with God, just
as the Word was with God, fiom the very beginning. Dostoievsky
had virtually to create God — and what a Herculean task that was !
Dostoievsky rose from the depths and, reaching the summit, retained
something of the depths about him still. With Whitman I have

221

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

the image of a man tossing like a cork in a turbulent stream ; he
is submerged now and then but there is never any danger of his
going down for good. The very substance of him prevented that.
One may say, of course, that our natures are God-given. We may
ako say that the Russia of Dostoievsky's day was a far different
world from the one Whitman grew up in. But, after acknowledging
and giving due emphasis to all the factors which determine the
development of character as well as the temperament of an artist,
I come back to the question of vision. Both had the prophetic
strain ; both were imbued with a message for the world. And
both saw the world clearly ! Both mingled with the world too,
let us not forget. From Whitman there exudes a largesse which is
godlike ; in Dostoievsky there is an intensity and acuity almost
superhuman. But the one emphasized the future and the other
the present. Dostoievsky, like so many of the Nineteenth Century
Russians, is eschatological : he has the Messianic strain. Whitman,
anchored firmly in the eternal now, in the flux, is almost indifferent
to the fate of the world. He has a hearty, boisterous, good-natured
hail-fellow-well-met tone often. He knows au fond that all*s well
with the world. He knows more. He knows that if there is any-
thing wrong with it, no tinkering on his part will mend it. He
knows that the only way to put it to rights, if we must use the
expression, is for every Hving individual to first put himself to rights.
His love and compassion for the whore, the beggar, the outcast,
the afficted, deUvers him from inspection and examination of
social problems. He preaches no dogma, celebrates no Church,
recognizes no mediator. He lives outdoors, circulating with the
wind, observing the seasons and the revolutions of the heavens.
His worship is impUcit, and that is why he can do nothing better
than sing hosanna the whole day long. He had problems, I know. He
had his sore moments, his trials and tribulations. He had his moments
of doubt too, perhaps. But they never obtrude in his work. He
remains not so much the great democrat as the hail and hearty
cosmocrator. He has abundant health and vitality. There perhaps
I have put my finger on it. (Not that I mean to compare the two
physically — the epileptic versus the man of the outdoors. No.)
I am talking of the health and vitality which exudes from his
language, which reflects, therefore, his inner state of beino;. Stress

222

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

ing this, I mean to indicate that freedom from cultural cares, the
lack of concern for the exacerbating problems of culture, probably
had a great deal to do with this tonic quality of his poetry. It
spared him those inroads which most European men of culture
arc at one time or another subject to. Whitman seems almost
impervious to the ills of the day. He was not living in the times
but in a condition of spiritual fullness. A European has much more
difficulty maintaining such a '* condition " when he attains it. He
is beleaguered on all sides. He must be for or against. He must
participate. It is almost impossible for him to be ** a world citizen " :
at the most he can be "a good European." Here too it is getting to be
difficult to be above the mel^e, but not impossible. There is the ele-
ment of chance here which in Europe seems altogether eliminated.
I wonder if I have made clear what I meant to bring out ? I
was speaking of the fullness of life as it is reflected in literature.
It is really the fullness of the world I am concerned with. Whitman
is closer to the Upanishads, Dostoievsky to the New Testament.
The rich cultural stew of Europe is one kind of fullness, the heavy
ore of everyday American life another. Compared to Dostoievsky,
Whitman is in a sense empty. It is not the emptiness of the abstract,
either. It is rather a divine emptiness. It is the quahty of the name-
less void out of which sprang chaos. It is the emptiness which
precedes creation. Dostoievsky is chaos and fecundity. Humanity,
with him, is but a vortex in the bubbling maelstrom. He had it in
him to give birth to many orders of humanity. In order to prescribe
some Hvable order he had, one might almost say, to create a God.
For himself ? Yes. But for all other men and women too. And
for the children of this world. Dostoievsky could not Hve alone,
no matter how perfect his Hfe or the life of the world. Whitman
could, we feel. And it is Whitman who is called the great democrat.
He was that, to be sure. He was because he had achieved self-
sufficiency . . . What speculations this thought opens up ! Whit-
man arrived, Dostoievsky still winging his way heavenward. But
there is no question of precedence here, no superior or inferior.
One is a sun, if you like, the other a star. Lawrence spoke some-
where of Dostoievsky striving to reach the moon of his being,*

* " He who gets nearer the sun is leader, the aristocrat of aristocrats, or
he who, Uke Dostoievsky, gets nearest the moon of our not-being."

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

A typical Lawrencian image. Behind it lay a thesis which Lawrence
was endeavoring to support. I have no axe to grind : I accept
them both, Dostoievsky and Whitman, in essence and in utterance.
I have put these two luminaries side by side merely to bring out
certain differences. The one seems to me to glow with a human
light, and he is thought of as a fanatic, as a demonic being ; the
other radiates a cool cosmic light, and he is thought of as the brother
of all men, as the man in the midst of life. They both gave Hght,
that is the important thing. Dostoievsky is all passion, Whitman
compassion. A difference in voltage, if you like. In Dostoievsky's
work one has the feeling that the angel and the devil walk hand
in hand ; they understand one another and they are tolerant of
one another. Whitman's work is devoid of such entities : there is
humanity in the rough, there is Nature grandiose and eternal, and
there is the breath of the great Spirit.

I have often made mention of the celebrated photograph of
Dostoievsky which I used to stare at years ago — it hung in the
window of a bookshop on Second Avenue in New York. That
will always be for me the real Dostoievsky. It is the man of the
people, the man who suffered for them and with them. The eternal
moujik. One docs not care to know whether this man was a writer,
a saint, a criminal or a prophet. One is struck by his universality.
As for Whitman, the photo which I had always identified with his
being, the one everyone knows, I discovered the other day that
this photo no longer holds for me.

In the book on Whitman by Paul Jamati* I found a photo of
Whitman taken in the year 1854. He is then thirty-five years of age
and has just found himself. He has the look of an Oriental poet —
I was almost going to say ** sage." But there is something about
the expression of the eyes which is not the look of a sage. There is
just a tinge of melancholy in it. Or so it seems to me. He has not
yet become that ruddy, bcwhiskered bard of the famous photograph.
It is a bcautifiil and arresting face, however, and there is deep quest
in the eyes. But, if I may venture to say, judging firom a mere photo,

* Walt Whitman, by Paul Jamati ; Editions Seghers, Paris, 1949.

This same photo (from the collection of Hart Crane) serves as frontis-
piece to the 1949 reprint by The Bodley Press, New York, of Walt Whitman
the Wound Dresser, edited by Richard M. Bucke and ynth. an Introduction
by Oscar Cargill.

224

tBTTBB TO PIBRRB LESDAlN

there is also a remote stellar look in these Ught blue eyes. The

'* veiled ** look which they register, and which is contradicted by

the set of the lips, comes from looking at the world as though it

were "aHen," as though he had been brought from above, or

beyond, to go through a needless (?) experience here below. This

is a strange stotement to make, I know, and perhaps utterly without

support. A mere intuition, a flash in the pan. But the thought

haunts me, and no matter whether justifiable or not, it has altered

my conception of the way Whitman looked at the world and the

way he looked to the world. It conflicts disturbingly with the 'f)

image I had unquestioningly preserved, the one of the genial mixer,

the man who moved with the throng. This new image of Whitman

was captured six years before the outbreak of our Civil War, which

was for Whitman what Siberia was for Dostoievsky. In this look

of 1854 I read his unUmited capacity for sharing the suflerings of

his fellow man ; I can see why he nursed the wounded on the

battlefield, why destiny, in other words, did not place a sword

in his hand. It is the look of the ministering angel, an angel who

is also a poet and seer.

I must speak fiirther of this arresting photo of the year 1854,
which is not the photo, by the way, that Jamati finds so remarkable.
I have just had a look at the photo Jamati dwells on, the daguerro-
type from which a steel engraving was made and which served
as the firontispiece to the first edition of Leaves of Grass. To me
there is nothing very remarkable about it ; thousands of young
Americans in that period might have passed for this Whitman.
What is amaadng, to my mind, is that the same man could have
looked so difierent in two photos taken in the same year !

In search of an accurate physical description of Whitman, I
looked up the book by his friend, the Canadian doctor, Richard
Maurice Bucke.* It is, unfortunately, a description of Whitman
at the age of sixty-one. However . . . Says Bucke : " The eye-
brows are highly arched, so that it is a long distance from the eye
to the center of the eyebrow. [This is the facial feature that strikes
one most at fint sight.] The eyes themselves are light blue, not
large — indeed, in proportion to the head and face they seem rather

* Cosmic CotuciousnesSt 13th edition, 1947 ; E. P. Dutton & Co., New
Yoric.

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small ; they arc dull and heavy, not expressive— what expression
they have is kindness, composure, suavity." He goes on to say
that " his cheeks are round and smooth. His face has no lines expres-
sive of care, or weariness, or age ... I have never seen his look,
even momentarily, express contempt, or any vicious feeHng. I
have never known him to sneer at any person or thing, or to manifest
in any way or degree either alarm or apprehension, though he has
in my presence been placed in circumstances that would have caused
both in most men." He speaks of the " well-marked rose color "
of Whitman's body. And concludes thus : " His face is the noblest
I have ever seen."

In the few pages which Bucke devotes to Whitman in this volume
I find more of import than in whole books by the " professors of
literature " who have made him an " object of study." But before I
point out some of the salient passages let me say that, in pondering
over the duaHty of Whitman, I forgot completely that he was a
Gemini, probably the finest and fullest example of this type that
ever lived, just as Goethe was the greatest example of a Virgo.
Bucke has thrown the full power of his searchlight on the new
and the old beings which Whitman managed to make compatible.
Stressing the sudden change in the man's fimdamental being, which
occurred in his thirty-fourth or thirty-fifth year, he says : " We
expect and always find a difference between the early and mature
writings of the same man . . . But in the case of Whitman {as in
that of Balzac*) writings of absolutely no value were immediately
followed (and, at least in Whitman's case, without practice or
study) by pages across each of which in letters of ethereal fire are
written the words eternal life ; pages covered not only by a master-
piece but by such vital sentences as have not been written ten times in
the history of the race ..."

And now for some of the observations which I find singularly
interesting and significant ...

Walt Whitman, in my talks with him at that time,
always disclaimed any lofty intention in himself or his
poems. If you accepted his explanations they were simple
and commonplace. But when you came to think about
these explanations, and to enter into the spirit of them,

* Italics mine.
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

you found that the simple and the commonplace with him
included the ideal and the spiritual.

He said to me one day (I forget now in what connec-
tion): 'I have imagined a life which should be that of the
average man in average circumstances, and still grand,
heroic*

I beg you to keep this in mind I We shall come back to it shortly.
It is devastatingly important.

He seldom read any book deUberately through, and
there was no more (apparent) system about his reading
than in anything else that he did ; that is to say, there was
no system about it at all.

He read no language but English, yet I believe he knew
a great deal more French, German and Spanish than he
would own to. But if you took his own word for it, he
knew very Httle of any subject.

Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever Hved Hked so many
things and disHked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural
objects seemed to have a charm for him ; all sights and
sounds, outdoor and indoor, seemed to please him. He
appeared to like (and I beUeve he did Hke) all the men,
women and children he saw (though I never knew him
to say that he liked anyone), but each who knew him felt
that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also . . .
He was especially fond of children, and all children Hked
and trusted him at once.

For young and old his touch had a charm that caimot
be described, and if it could the description would not be
beUeved except by those who knew him either personally
or through Leaves of Grass. This charm (physiological
more than psychological), if understood, would explain
the whole mystery of the man, and how he produced such
effects not only upon the well, but among the sick and
wounded.

He did not talk much ... I never knew him to argue
or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always
justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously,
those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I
often thought he even took pleasure in these sharp
criticisms, slanders and the oppositions of his enemies. He
said that his critics were quite right, that behind what his
fiiends saw he was not at all what he seemed, and that,
from the point of view of his foes, his book deserved all

2^7

tHE BOORS IN MY LIPB

the hard things they could say of it — and that he himself
undoubtedly deserved them and plenty more.

He said one day ... * After all, the great lesson is that
no special natural sights — not Alps, Niagara, Yosemite,
or anything else — is more grand or more beautiftil than
the ordinary sunrise and sunset, earth and sky, the common
trees and grass.* Properly understood, I beUeve this suggests
the central teaching of his writings and Hfe — namely, that
the commonplace is the grandest of all things ; that the
exceptional in any line is no finer, better or more beautiftil
than the usual, and that what is really wanting is not that
we should possess something we have not at present, but
that our eyes should be opened to see and our hearts to
feel what we all have.

He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationaUty or
class of men, or time in the world's Imtory, or (even)
feudalism, or against any trades or occupations — ^not even
against any animals, insects, plants or inanimate things,
nor any of the laws of nature, or any of the results of those
laws, such as illness, deformity or death. He never com-
plained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness or
at anything else. He never in conversation, in any company,
or under any circumstances, used language that could be
thought indeHcate (of course he has used language in his
poems which has been thought indeUcate, but none that is
so.) ... He never swore ; he could not very well, since
as far as I know he never spoke in anger, and apparendy
never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not
beheve he ever felt it . . .

And now I come to the passage from Whitman's prose, to be
linked with the other one I signalled. Bucke says of it that it " seems
prophetical of the coming race." Howsoever that may be, I wish to
say to you, my dear Lesdain, that not only do I regard this passage
as the key to Whitman's philosophy, the very kernel of it, but —
and once again I beg you not to think this egotistical — ^I regard it as
expressing my own mature view of Hfe. I will even go fiirther and
say — and now indeed you may be surprised — that this view of
things strikes me as essentially American, or to put it another way,
as the underlying promise which inspired not only our best repre-
sentatives but which is felt and understood by the so-called "common
man." And if I am right, if this broad, easy, genial, simple view of
life is reflected (even dimly) in both the highest and the lowest
22S

LETTER TO PtBRRE LBSOAIN

Strata of American society, there is indeed hope for a new race of
man to be bom on this continent, hope for a new heaven and a
new earth. But let me not withhold the statement longer . . .

A fitly bom and bred race, growing up in right con-
ditions of outdoor as much as indoor harmony, activity
and development, would probably, from and in those
conditions, find it enough merely to live — and would,
in their relations to the sky, air, water, trees, etc., and to the
countless common shows, and in the fact of life itself,
discover and achieve happiness — ^with Being suffused night
and day by wholesome ecstasy, surpassing all the pleasures
that wealth, amusement, and even gratified intellect,
emdition, or the sense of art, can give.

You may think it presumptuous of me, insular, absurdly patriotic,
or what, but I insist that the tenor of this passage, the distinctive
note it strikes, its sweeping inclusiveness (and annihilation at the
same time), is absolutely American. I would say that it was on
this rock — temporarily forgotten — that America was founded.
For it is solid rock, this thought, this platform, and not a gaseous
abstraction of the intellect. It is what the highest representatives
of the human race have themselves beUeved and advocated, though
their thoughts have been sadly twisted and mutilated. That it is
the destiny of the common man, of every man, and not the way
of the elect, of the chosen few, is what makes it seem more trae and
vaUd to me. I have always looked upon the " elect ** as the pre-
cursors of a type to come. Viewed from an historical point of view,
they represent the peaks of the various pyramids which humanity
has thrown up. Viewed from the etemal point of view — ^and arc
we not always face to face with the etemal ? — they represent the
seeds which will form the base of new pyramids to come. We
are always waiting for the revolution. The real revolution is taking
place constandy. And the name for this deeper process is emancipa-
tion— self-liberation in other words. What did Faure quote from
Whitman i *' The world will be complete for him who is himself
complete." Is it necessary to add that for such beings government
is superfluous i There can only be government — that is, abdication
of the self, of one's own inaHenable rights — ^where there are incom-
plete beings. The New Jerusalem can only be made of and by

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emancipated individuals. That is community. That is " the absolute
collective." Are we to see it ever ? If we see it now with our mind's
eye we see it in the only actuality it will ever have.

" Zen is everyday life," you will find written in every book on
the subject. " Nirvana is capable of attainment now" you will also
find in every book on the subject. Attainment is hardly the word,
because the ** fulfilment " implied in such statements is something
to be realized in the immediate present . . . How very like Zen
is this from Whitman : " Is it lucky to be bom f It is just as lucky
to die."

In summarizing his pages on Whitman, Bucke makes, among
others, the following statements :

In no man who ever lived was the sense of eternal Ufe so
absolute.

Fear of death was absent. Neither in health nor in
sickness did he show any sign of it, and there is every
reason to believe he did not feel it.

He had no sense of sin.

And what of Evil ? Suddenly it is Dostoievsky's voice I hear.
If there be evil, there can be no God. Was that not the thought
which plagued Dostoievsky ? Whoever knows Dostoievsky knows
the torments he endured because of this conflict. But the rebel and
doubter is silenced towards the end, silenced by a magnificent
affirmation. (" Not resignation," as Janko Lavrin points out.)

Love all God's creation and every grain of sand in it.
Love every leaf, every ray of God's Hght. If you love
everything, you will preserve the divine mystery of things.
(Father Zosima, aUas the real Dostoievsky.)

And what of Evil ?

Whitman answered thus, not once, but again and again : " And
I say there is in fact no evil."

Twenty years after he had entered upon the new life, had taken
the path in order to become the path, like Lao-tse, like Buddha,
like Jesus, Whitman gives us the revolutionary poem, the Prayer
oj Columbus^ ostensibly, as Bucke says, his own prayer, in which
he describes in two immortal lines the illumination which had been
vouchsafed him :
230

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

Light rare untcUablc, lighting the very Hght,
Beyond all signs, descriptions, languages.

He imagines himself to be on his deathbed ; his condition is, by
worldly standards, pitiable. It would seem as if God had deserted
him, or punished him. Does Whitman doubt i The last two lines
of the above-mentioned poem give the answer. Bucke writes of
the moment thus : " What shall he say to God ? He says that
God knows him through and through, and that he is willing to
leave himself in God's hands." How could there be any doubt
in the breast of a man who had written : " I feel and know that
death is not the ending, as we thought, but rather the real beginning
— and that nothing ever is or can be lost, nor even die, nor soul
nor matter."

The questioning, the doubts, the denial and the negation even,
which abound in Dostoievsky's works, expressed through the
mouths of his various characters and revealing his obsession with
the problem of certitude, stand in sharp contrast to Whitman's
lifelong attitude. In some respects Dostoievsky reminds us of Job.
He arraigns the Creator and Hfe itself. To quote Janko Lavrin
again ..." Unable to accept life spontaneously, he was compelled
to take it up as a problem." And he adds immediately : " But
life as a problem demands a meaning which must satisfy our rational
and irrational selves. At a certain stage the meaning of life may
even become more important than life itself. One can rejea life
altogether, unless its meaning answers to the highest demands of
our consciousness."

A few weeks ago, in going through my papers, I ran across an
article I had torn out of the magazine Purpose (London, 1937).
It was by Erich Gutkind, on Job. I was tremendously impressed by
this new reading. I am sure I had never grasped the essential meaning
of his words when I read it and put it carefully away in 1937. I
mention this Httle essay, meaty and compact, because in it Gutkind
gives an explanation of the problem such as I have never seen
before. It connects, assuredly, with my preceding remarks about
Dostoievsky.

" In the Book of Job," he says, ** God is no longer measured by
the world, by the order or disorder of the world. But the world

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IRB BOOKS IN MY LIFB

is measured by God. The standard (just as it is light with Einstein)
is here God. And that which changes is the world. The Book
of Job leads us to a deeper undentanding of the world." He then
proceeds to explain that the Christian idea of sin as well as the
doctrine of reincarnation with its notion of Karma, the idea, namely,
that " everybody's suffering is explained by his own sins" is sharply
rejected in the Book of Job.

" Suffering is not the payment of a debt," he says, " but
rather a burden of responsibility. Job did not have to
answer for sins which he had committed. He took upon
himself the terrible problem of suffering." [Note how
all this connects with Dostoievsky.] "The question with
which he wrestled is a basic question of the order of the
world, the struggle between God and Satan ... It is the
question of whedier the world b meaningful or meaning-
less. Is the world good or evil ?"

And so on. Gutkind points out, en passant^ that in the end every-
thing was returned to Job — ^his wealth, his health, and his children
also. "Job does not perish like the Greek heroes."

Then, diving into the heart of the problem, he says : " But
let us ask with Job : What does the blind realm of Fate stand for i
What kind of strange sphere is this, in which God leaves everything
to the operation of chance i " He says that God's answer to Job
docs not appear to meet the cry of his soul. God answered Job
cosmologically, he says. " Where wast thou, man, when I founded
the cosmos i " That was God's reply. He points out that " in the
cosmos everything takes place according to law. There everything
is weighed against everything else ... All is balanced." Nature
is the realm of Fate, he sutes. He says that Job, in seeking to under-
stand God's ways, " takes God as a kind of cause, a natural force."
" But," says he, " God is not only a principle whereby the universe
can be explained or given meaning. That is the God of the
theologians — an abstract God."

In the cosmos, man and God can never come together.
The pantheistic idea, that God is to be found everywhere in
nature, is one of the causes for the decline of the concept
of God . . . Nothing has reality of itself Nature is
relative through and through. Every phenomenon is itself
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LBTTBR TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

part of an indescribably complicated net of relations.
Reality is not to be found there. The Jewish tradition
teaches that Abraham sought God in the cosmos. But he
did not find him there. And because he could not find
him there, he was driven to search for God where he
reveals himself, namely, in the direct conversation between
God and man.

Then follows this, which is what I have been leading up to :

One must always so conduct oneself as if there were no
God at all ! We may not explain the riddle of nature by
God : that would be the end of science. We may not
wait for succor from God : that would be the end of
human initiative. The less we concern ourselves with
the idea of God in our explanation of the world and in
our practical Hfe, the more clearly will God appear. This
is what the Book of Job teaches when God asks : * Where
wast thou when I founded the cosmos ? * And even :
* Where art thou, when I direct the cosmos ? *

It is often said of Whitman that he had an inflated ego. I am
sure the same might be said of Dostoievsky, if we are to look at
them narrowly, because in Dostoievsky's extreme humility there
was an extraordinary arrogance. But we discover nothing by
examining the egos of such men. They transcended the ego : the
one through his ceaseless and almost unbearable questioning, the
other by his steady, clear affirmation of life. Dostoievsky under-
took, as far as it was humanly possible, to assume the problems,
the torture and the anguish of all men— and especially, as we know
so well, the incomprehensible suffering of children. Whitman
answered man s problems, not by weighing them and examining
them, but by a continuous chant of love, of acceptance, in which
the answer was always impHcit. The Song of Myself is no different,
fimdamentally, than a hymn of creation.

D. H. Lawrence closes his Studies in Classic American Literature
with a chapter on Whitman. It is an incongruous piece of writing,
a mixture of shoddy balderdash and flashes of amazing acuity of
perception. To mc it is the rock on which Lawrence shattered
himself. He had to come to Whitman eventually, and he did. He
cannot pay him out-and-out homage, no, not Lawrence. The truth
is, he cannot take the measure of the man. Whitman is a pheno-

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mcnon to him, a very special kind of phenomenon — the American
phenomenon.

But, despite all the fuming and ranting, despite the rather cheap
song and dance with which his essay opens, Lawrence does succeed
in saying things about Whitman which are imperishable. There
is much in Whitman he fails to grasp, much he could not grasp,
because, to be honest and candid, he was a lesser man, a man more-
over who never achieved individuation. But Whitman's essential
message he grasped, and the way he interprets it is a challenge to
all interpreters to come.

'* Whitman's essential message," says Lawrence, " was the
Open Road. The leaving of me soul free unto herself, the
leaving of his fate to her and to the loom of the open road.
Which is the bravest doctrine man has ever proposed to
himself"

Declaring that the true rhythm of the American continent
speaks out in Whitman, that he is the first white aboriginal, that
he is the greatest and the first and the only American teacher (and
no Savior !), he says also that he was a great changer of the blood
in the veins of men. His true and earnest avowal of admiration,
affection and reverence for Whitman begins at this point in the
essay . . .

Whitman, the great poet, has meant so much to me.
Whitman, the one man breaking a way ahead. Whitman,
the one pioneer. And only Whitman . . . Ahead of
Whitman, nothing. Ahead of all poets, pioneering into
the wilderness of unopened Hfe, Whitman. Beyond him,
none.

Singing the song of the soul himself, Lawrence grows ecstatic.
He speaks of" a new doctrine, a new morality, a moraUty of actual
Hving, not of salvation." Whitman's morality, he declares, " was
a morahty of the soul Uving her life, not saving herself . . . The
soul Hving her life along the incarnate mystery of the open road."

Magnificent words, and Lawrence meant them undoubtedly.
Towards the end of the essay, speaking of " the true democracy "
which Whitman preached, speaking of how it makes itself known,
he says, and with what unerringncss! : " Not by a progression of
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

piety, or by works of charity. Not by works at all. Not by anything
but just itself. The soul passing unenhanced, passing on foot and
being no more than itself And recognized, and passing by or
greeted according to the soul's dictate. If it be a great soul, it will
be worshipped in the road."

" The only riches, the great souls." That is the closing sentence
of the essay and the book. (Dated Lobos, New Mexico.)

And on this note I think I shall end my letter, my very dear
Pierre Lesdain.

Big SuTt California
May lothf 1950

Postscriptum

I can't bring my letter to a close at this point. There's more
to say. What matter if it assumes elephantine proportions ? Unwit-
tingly I am being led to disclose certain views and opinions I might
never have released had I not embarked on this unintended excursus.
You are probably the only man in Europe who will not wince or
balk at anything I say, whom I cannot deceive or disillusion, no
matter if I should act the idiot. You have been most modest and
reticent about yourself I know almost nothing about you. But
I know that you are greater than you represent yourself to be, if
only because of your unswerving faith, loyalty and devotion. These
qualities are not found in combination in a nobody.

Anyway, I should like to amplify certain thoughts I threw out,
reconcile certain "apparent" contradictions, and pick up some
threads I left dangling in mid-air. First, then, let me dispose of the
last-named, rapidly . . .

Opposite page 65 of Jamati's book is a photograph of Whitman
which I never saw before. It might be taken, at first glance, for
an early photo of Lincoln. The date is uncertain, it says below the
photo, but it is definitely some years before the one of 1854 which
I singled out for your attention and about which I may still have
more to say. Parenthetically, speaking of Whitman's physical
appearance, did I mention that in addition to having a rose-tinted
skin, hght-blue eyes, an aquiline nose, he also had black hair which,
as you will note in the 1854 photo, is already turning gray j Some-
how, I never pictured him as having black hair and blue eyes ; it

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is an irresistible combination, in man or woman. The Irish have it
occasionally.

As for Lincoln, one of the homeliest men imaginable, if wc are
to beheve his own words, I gather that, although their paths crossed
a number of times, there were never any spoken words between
diem. Whitman had an uncommon veneration for Lincoln. A
number of times during the latter years of his life he took part in
commemorative services for Lincoln, sometimes at the risk of his
health. Is it not curious, too, that Lincoln should use almost the
same words about Whitman that Napoleon did about Goethe ?
Both recognized the tnan.

Thinking of governments, of the excellent ones we might have
had and still could have, despite all adverse conditions, I could
not help but speculate between pauses in writing this letter on what
America might be today if, directly after the Civil War, assuming
Lincoln to be still alive, he had had in his cabinet — dead or alive —
the following : Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson, Robert E. Lee,
John Brown, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau,
Mark Twain, Walt Whitman.

I think of Whitman's funeral rites, as Jamati gives it, with Bob
Ingersoll, of all men, pronotmdng the last words. Who would
have thought that these two should be linked together in death ?
And not only that, not only the crowds which followed die funeral
procession or lined the sidewalks, but the reading at the grave first
firom Whitman's own work and then from one after another of
his peen. (" Dc ses pairs," says Jamad.) Who were these ? Buddha,
Confucius, Zoroaster, Jesus, Plato, Mohammed! What American
poet was ever given such a send-off ?

And then the admirable fortime, explicable and altogether justified,
which attended Whitman's Hfelong fight to gain recognidon for
his work. What a roster of names we find enlisted on his side !
Beginning with Emerson who, on receiving a copy of the first
edidon oi Leaves of Grassy writes : " Les Amiricaius qui sent a Yitranger
peuvent rentrer ; il nous est ni un artiste** Emerson, Thoreau, Bucke,
Carlyle, Burroughs, William Douglas O'Connor, Horace Traubcl,
Mark Twain, the wonderful Anne Gilchrist, John Addington
Symonds, Ruskin, Joaquin Miller (California's Whitman), the
Rosettis, Swinburne, Edward Carpenter . . . what a roster!
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

And last but perhaps not least, Peter Doyle, the omnibus driver.
As for Joaquin Miller*— we are getting close to home now! —
it was this poet of the Sierras who, incensed by the outcries against
Whitman, deHvered himself thus : " Get homme vivra, je vous le
le dis! Get homme vivra, soyez-en surs, lorsque le dome puissant
de votre Gapitole li-bas, n*^l^vera plus ses ^paules rondes contre
les cercles du temps."

Let us not overlook another signal event in Whitmian's career —
his presence at the inauguration, in Baltimore, of the monument to
the memory of Edgar Allen Poe. (** Le seul po^te am^ricain qui
ait r^pondu h I'invitation du comit^,** says Jamati.)

Let us not overlook either the fact that, as his work began to
draw attention in Europe — ^in England particularly, strange! —
as one translation after another appeared in various countries, the
first French translation (of fragments only) appears in Provencal!
I find that a rather happy coincidence.

And L^on Bazalgette, the most devoted of Whitman's bio-
graphers! What a labor of love his was! What a tribute from the
Old World! I remember reading Bazalgette's work in Paris ; I
remember too, though my memory may be faulty, that in this
same period I was also reading these strangely different works :
The Confessions of St. Augustine and The City of God ; Nijkisky's
Diary ; The Absolute Collective, by Erich Gutkind ; The Spirit of
Zen by Alan Watts ; Louis Lambert and Seraphita of Balzac ; La
Mort d*un Quelconque, of Jules Romains ; the Hfe of the Tibetan
saint, Milarepa, and Connaissance de I'Est by Paul Glaudel. (No,
I was never alone. At the worst, as I said somewhere, I was with
God!)

There is a side of Whitman which I have not sufl&dently stressed
and which to me is extremely illuminating — I mean his quiet,
steady, unruffled pursuit of the goal. How many editions of his
opus are issued at his own expense! What a struggle to get those
few " obnoxious," supposedly " obscene," poems included in a
definitive edition! Notice that he never wastes himself in struggling
against his enemies. He marches on, resolute, unwavering, unflinch-
ing. In his steadfast gaze they are overlooked, his enemies. As
he follows ** the open road," friends, supporters, champions spring

* His real name was Cincinnatus Heine Miller, and he was bom in Indiana.

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Up everywhere. They issue forth in his wake. Observe the way
he handles Emerson when the latter endeavors to remonstrate
with him about the inclusion of these " offensive ** poems in a
later edition. Is It not evident that Whitman is the superior of
the two i Had Whitman capitulated on this issue the whole picture
would have been altered. (True, he made concession to his English
benefactors in omitting from the English editions the questionable
items, but he did so, I am sure, knowing that ultimately he would
win out in the homeland.) This fight against the powers that be,
taking place as it did in the middle and latter part of the Nineteenth
Century — the most conservative period in our history — cannot be
stressed too much. The whole coune of American lettcn was
affected by it. (As it was again with the appearance of Dreiser's
Sister Carrie.) When it comes to the case of James Joyce, it is by
a sort of ** generous revenge ** that an American court absolves
the author of Ulysses. How much easier it was to sanction the free
circulation of Ulysses, in the second decade of the Twentieth Century,
than to grant Whitman full freedom of expression a half-century
earlier! It remains to be seen what the ultimate verdict will be,
by French, English and American authorities, in the case of my
ovm questionable works . . . However, I did not touch on this
theme to draw attention to my own case but rather to point out
that a sort of special providence seemed to guide the destiny of a
man like Whitman. He who had no doubts, he who never employed
the language of negation, nor mocked, sneered at, reviled or insulted
other human beings, was proteacd and preserved by staunch friends
and admirers. Jamati speaks of the astonishment which the recrimina-
tions against Whitman's outspoken poems aroused in Anne Gilchrist.

EUe y voit une glorification, un respect, un amour de
la vie tout reUgieux et elle se demande avec ing^nuit^, en
s'apercevant qu'elle vibre si naturellement au diapason
des Feuilles aHerbe, si ces versets n'ont pas ^t^ Merits
sp^cialement pour des femmes. He adds : Cette femme
au grand cceur, cette m^re accomplie, respect^e, admir^
qui sait d^couvrir * quelque chose de sacr^ dans tout,* quel
t^moin pour lui !

Her 'Hnginuiti" says Jamati. Her "perceptiveness," I would say.
Her courage. Her sublimity. Remember, she was an Englishwoman!
238

LBTTBR TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

No, even though Whitman may not have written them '* especially"
for women, his words were addressed to women as well as to men.
It is one of Whitman's rare virtues that throughout the poems
woman receives the same exalted homage as man. He saw them as
equals. He raised their manhood and their womanhood. He saw
what was feminine in man and what was masculine in woman —
long before Otto Weininger! He has been slandered because he
proclaimed the duaUty of sex in all of us. In one of the few instances
where he made a radical change in the original text it was to sub-
stitute a woman for a man— in order, it is said, to allay suspicion of
"homosexual" tendencies. What filth has been written on this
score! What absurdities the psychoanalysts have led us into!
Whoso talks love, great love, falls under suspicion. These same
gibes have been levelled against the greatest benefactors of the
human race. Love whidi is all-inclusive seems to repel us. And yet,
according to the deep-rooted legend of creation, man was originally
bi-sexual. The first Adam was complete — or hermaphroditic. In
his deepest being man will always be complete-— that is, man and
woman both.

When some pages back I referred to that veiled and distant look
in Whitman's eyes, it was not, I hope, to give the impression that
I think of him as cold, indifierent, aloof, a man Uving apart in
"Brahmic splendor," and deigning, when the mood seizes him,
to mingle with the crowd! The record of his years on the battle-
field and in the hospitals should be Plough to erase any such sus-
jttdon. What greater sacrifice, what greater renouncement of self,
could any man have made t He emerged firom that experience
shattered to the core.* He had witnessed more than is humanly
demanded of a man. It was not the inroads upon his health
that were so cruel, though a great tribulation, but rather the ordeal
of too close communion. Much is related of his inexhaustible
sympathy. Empathy is more nearly the word for it. But the word
to describe this enlarged state of feeling is lacking in our tongue.

This experience, which, I repeat, must be compared with Dos-
toievsky's ordeal in Siberia, incites endless speculation. In both
instances it was a Calvary. The inborn brotherly feeUng of Dostoiev-

* See page xvii of Oscar Cargill's Introduction (" Walt Whitman a«
Saint ") to The Wound Dresser.

239

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

sky, the natural comradely spirit in Whitman, were tested in the
fiery crudble by command of Fate. No matter how great the
humanity in them, neither would have elected for such an experience.
(I do not make this remark idly. There have been glorious instances
in man's history where individuals did elect to undergo some
awesome trial or test. I think of Jesus and Joan of Arc immediately.)
Whitman did not rush headlong to volunteer his services as a soldier
of the Republic. Dostoievsky did not fling himself into the '* move-
ment" in order to prove his capacity for martyrdom. In both
instances the situation was thrust upon them. But there, after all,
is the test of a man — ^how he meets the blows of Fate! It was in
exile that Dostoievsky really became acquainted with the teachings
of Jesus. It was on the batdefield, among the dead and wounded,
that Whitman discovered the meaning of abnegation, or better,
of service without thought of reward. Only heroic men could
have survived such ordeals. Only illuminated men could have
transformed these experiences into great messages of love and
benediction.

Whitman had seen the hght, had received his illumination, some
few years before this crucial period in his life. Not so with Dos-
toievsky. Both had a lesson to learn, and they learned it in the
midst of suffering, sickness and death. That insouciant spirit of
Whitman underwent a change, a deepening. His " camaraderie '*
developed into a more passionate acceptance of his fellowman.
That look of 1854, the look of a man who is a bit stunned by the
vision he has had, changes to a broader and deeper gleam which
embraces the whole universe of sentient beings — ^and the inanimate
world as well. His expression is no longer that of one coming
firom afar but of one who is in the thick of it, who accepts his lot
completely, who rejoices in it, come what may. There may be
less of the divine in it, but there is more of the purely human.
Whitman had need of this humanization. If, as I firmly believe,
there took place in him an expansion of consciousness (in 1854 or
'55), there had also to take place, unless he were to go mad, a
revaluation of all human values. Whitman had to live as a man,
not as a god. We know, in Dostoievsk}'*s case, how (via Solovyev
probably) this obsession with the idea of a " man-god " persisted.
Dostoievsky, illumined fi-om the depths, had to humanize the god
240

LBTTBK TO PtBRR£ LP.SDAIN

in him. Whitman, receiving his illumination from beyond,
sought to divinize the man in him. This fecundation of
god and man— the man in god, the god in man— 4iad far-reaching
effects in both instances. Today it is common to hear that
the prophecies of these two great figures have come to nought.
Both Russia and America have become thoroughly mechanized,
autocratic, tyrannical, materialistic and power mad. But wait!
History must run its course. The negative aspect always precedes
the positive.

Biographers and critics often take these crucial periods in the
life of a subject and, dwelling on " brotherhood " and " universality
of spirit,** give the impression that it was the mere proximity to
suffering and death which developed these attributes in their
subjects. But what affected Whitman and Dostoievsky, if I read
their characters righdy, was the ceaseless unbaring of the soul
which diey were made to witoess. They were affected, wounded
is the word, in their souls. Dostoievsky did not go to prison as a
social worker, nor Whitman to the batdefield as nurse, doctor, or
priest. Dostoievsky was obliged to live the lives of each one of
his fellow prisoners because of utter lack of privacy : he lived
like a beast, as we know from the records. Whitman had to become
nurse, doctor, priest all in one, because there was no one else about
who combined these rare gifts. His temperamait would never
have led him to choose any of these pursuits. But that same animal
magnetism — or that same divinity in each — forced these two indivi-
duak, under similar stress, to go beyond themselves.* An ordinary
man, after release from such a situation, might well devote himself
for the rest of his days to the care of the unfortunate ; he might
well conceive it to be his " mission ** to thus dedicate his life. But
Whitman and Dostoievsky go back to their writing. If they have
a mission it will be incorporated in their ** message " .

If I have not made it clear already, let me say that it was precisely
because they were artists first and foremost that these two men
acatcd the special conditions relating to their cruel experience,
and conditioned themselves to transmute and ennoble the experience .
Not all great men arc capable of supporting the naked meeting of
soul with soul, as was the case with these two. To witoess not once,

^ As in the case of Cabeza de Vaca.

241

THE BOOCS IN MY L 1 1* B

but again and again, the specucie of a man unbaring his soul is
ahnost beyond human endurance We do not come forward with
our souls ordinarily. A man may lay his heart bare, but not his
souL When a man does expose himself to another in diis way
there is demanded a response which few men, apparendy, are
capable of. In some ways I think that Dostoievsky's situation was
even more trying than Whitman's. Performing for his ^ow-
su£feren all the services that Whitman did, he was nevertheless
always regarded as one of diem, that is, a criminal Namrally he
thought ho more of ** reward " than Whitman, but his dignity
as a human being was ever deprived him. In another sense, of
course, it could be said that this very fact made it easier for him
to act the *' ministering angel." It nullified all thot^ht of being an
angel He could see himself as a victim and a su£ferer because in
&a he was one.

But the important point — let me not lose it I — ^is that, whedier
the r6les they assumed were deUberate or forced upon them, it was
to these two beings that the anguished souls about them turned
instinctively and unerringly. Acting as mediators between God
and man, or if not mediaton then intercessors, they surpassed the
''experts'* whose calling they had assumed. The one quahty
which they had strongly in common was their inabiUty to rejea
any experience. It was their utter humanness which made them
capable of accepting the great ** responsibility " of suffering. They
embraced more than their share because it was a " privilege," not
because it was their duty or their mission in ]i£c. Thus, aU that
passed between them and th«ir fellow sufferers went beyond the
gamut of ordinary experience. Men saw into their souls and they
saw into men's souls. The Utde sel^ in each instance, was burned
away. When it was over they could not do other than resume their
private tasks. They were no longer ** men of letters," no, not even
artists any more, but deliverers. We know only too well how their
respective messages burst the firames of the old vehicles. How could
it be otherwise i The revolutionizing of art which they helped
bring about, which they initiated to an extent we are not yet
properly aware of^ was part and parcel of the greater task of tran»-
valuating all human values. Their concern with art was of a different
order firom that of other celebrated revolutionaries. It was a move-
242

LETTBB to PIERRfi LESDAIN

mcnt from the center of man's being outward, and the repercussions
from that outer sphere (which is still veiled to us) we have yet to
hear. But let us not for one moment beHeve that it was a vain or
lost irruption of the spirit. Dostoievsky plunged deeper than any
man before letting fly his arrows ; Whitman soared higher than
any before tuning in to our antennae.

Still I cannot leave the subject of this very special ordeal they
underwent. I must come back to it now in another way, my own
personal way. There is something I am struggUng to make absolutely
dear . . .

You know that for almost five years I was the employment
manager of a telegraph company. You know from the Capricorn
book what the nature and extent of this experience was. Even a
dullard could sense that from this glut of human contact something
was bound to happen. I am aware that I have emphasized the matter
of mere numbers, and not only of numbers but of the variety of
types as well as the conditions of life which was my everyday fare.
Fleetingly, too fleetingly, it seems to me now, I sketched the poig-
nancy of these man-to-man situations into which I was plunged
daily. But did I emphasize suflSciendy this aspect of my daily
experience — that men debased themselves before me, that they
stripped themselves naked, that they withheld nothing, nothing i
They wept, they knelt at my feet, they snatched my hand to kiss
it. Oh, to what lengths did they not go ? And why ? In order
to get a job, or in order to thank me for giving them one ! As
if I were God Almighty ! As if I controlled their private destinies.
And I, the last man on earth who wished to interfere with the
destiny of another, the last man on earth who wished to stand
either above or below another man, who wanted to look each
man in the face and greet him as a brother, as an equal, I was obliged,
or I believed that I was obliged, to play this role for almost five years.
(Because I had a wife and child to support ; because I could find
no other job ; because I was thoroughly incapable, unfit, except
in this accidental role. Accidental, yes ! because I had asked only
to be a messenger, not the employment manager !) And so every
day I found myself averting my gaze. I was in turn humiliated
and exasperated. Humiliated to think that anyone should regard
me as his bene&aor, exasperated to think that human beings could

*43

THB BOOKS IN MY LIFE

beg SO ignominiously for such a thing as a job. True, I myself
had fought for the right to be " a messenger/* Rejected, perhaps
because they thought I was not in earnest, I stormed the president's
ofiBce. Yes, I too had made a big thing of it — of this lousy, unmen-
tionable messenger boy's job. (Twenty-eight years old I was.
Rather mature for such a job.) Because my pride had been wounded
I insisted on my rights. I was to be rejected ? I who had condescended
to accept the lowest job on earth ? Incredible ! Thus, when I am
returned from the president's office to the general manager's,
knowing in advance that victory is in my palm— notice now the
Dostoievskian touch ! — ^nothing will do but to represent myself
as the supreme cosmodemoniacal messenger — God's own, you might
say. I know as well as the astute dud who is listening to me that
it is no longer a question of taking a messei^er boy's job. Had my
listener told me that he was preparing to groom me to become
the next president of the telegraph company, instead of the employ-
ment manager of the messenger department, my pride was then
so inflated that I would not have blinked an eye. But, though I
did not become a future candidate for the presidency, I nevertheless
got more than I had bargained for. I never imderstood till that
moment when I took over as employment manager, with the
destinies of over a thousand individuals in my hands, what the
prayers and entreaties of the unfortunate must sound like in God's
ears. (That there is no such Being as these wretches imagine makes
it all the more horrible and ironic.) For these poor " cosmococdc "
messengers I was dej&nitely God. Not Jesus the Christ, not his
Holiness, the Pope, but God ! And to be God, if only as simulacrum,
is about the most devastating situation a man can find himself in.
These petty tyrants who call themselves dictators, these mice who
think they alone can govern the world of men, I only wish to God
these idiots might be permitted to play the role they imagine them-
selves suited for to the utter limit ! Why, in the knowledge of their
utter fatuoumess, why can we citizens of the world not surrender
to them fiiU and unlimited power for a brief interlude ? Nothing
would shatter this bubble of pretense (which we all have to a degree)
quicker than such a sanction. But if we are not even willing to commit
ourselves to God's hands — I mean those who helkve in Him— 4ow can
we ever hope to conduct such a drastic and humorous experiment ?
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

This God whom men imagine to be constantly cupping both
cars in order to catch their entreaties, their blandishments, their
begnilements, does he not blush, does he not wince, does he not
squirm with anguish, chagrin and mortification when he listens
in on this sickly caterwaul issuing firom this tiny abode called the
Earth i (For we are not the one and only order of creation. Far
from it ! What of the other stellar abodes ? Think of diose long
exploded as well as those which are not yet ! )

My dear Lesdain, what I am trying to say is this ... a man
can be robbed of his human dignity by being put in a position above
his fellow men, by being asked to dp what no man has the right
to do, namely, give and take dispensations, judge and condemn,
or accept thanks for a favor which is not a favor but a privilege that
every human being is entided to. I don't know which was wonc
to endure — their shameless entreaties or their unmerited gratitude.
I only know that I was torn apart, that I wanted more than any-
thing in the world to Hve my own life and never again take part
in this cruel scheme of master and slave. My solution was to write,
and to do that necessitated another descent into the abyss. This
time I am really imdemeath, not above, as before. Now I have to
listen to what others want, what they think good or bad, above all,
" what sells." But there is one comfort in this new role — ^I am not
taking the bread out of anyone's mouth by plying my trade. If
I have a boss, he is invisible. And I never pray to him, any more
than I did to the Big Boss.

Then, when I think I have made myself into a capable worker,
when I think I know my trade, when I think I can give satisfaction,
when I am even reconciled to a long postponement of" my wages,"
I come face to face with the big bugaboo : PubHc Taste. You
remember I said that if Whitman had capitulated on this issue, if
he had obeyed the voice of his counselors, a totally different
edifice would have reared itself. There are the friends and supporters
who appear when you swim with the crowd ; there are the other
kind of friends and supporters who rally round you when you are
menaced. The latter are the only kind worthy of the name. It
is strange but the only kind of support that means anything comes
from those who beUcve in you to the hilt. The ones who go the
whole hog. Let there be the slightest wavering, the slightest doubt,

245

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

the slightest defection, and your would-be supporter turns into
your worst enemy. For complete dedication there must be a cor-
responding total acceptance. Those who defend you in spite of
your faults work against you in the long run. When you champion
a man he must be all of a piece ; he must be that which he is through
and through, and no doubts about it.

(There has been a lapse of about thirty-six hours. The thread
is broken. But I wiU enter by the back door . . .)

When the illuminated individual is returned to the world, when
his vision finally adjusts itself to re-cmbracc that view of the world
which the ordinary mortal never loses, the round orb of the eye
seems to grow fuUer, deeper and more luminous. He takes time
to readjust, to see the mountains as mountains again and the waters
as waters. One n<Jt only sees himself seeing, one sees with added
sight. That extra sight reveals itself by the serenity of the glance.
The mouth too expresses that extra sight, if I may put it so. It
does not shut firmly and tightly ; the lips remain always sHghtly
parted. This serenity of the Hps impHes the abdication of useless
struggle. The whole body, in fact, expresses the joy of surrender.
The more it relaxes, the more it glows. The whole being becomes
incandescent.

We know how impressed Balzac was when he read in Swedenborg
that there are " solitary " angels. An extraordinary utterance, no
gainsaying it. And did not Whitman say : ** Sooner or later we
come down to one single, soHtary soul i " Aye, eventually we get
to bedrock, to the node which is as eternal in the human being as
in God. And if, in the presence of such individuals, we have the
impression ...

(Another lapse of thirty-six hours— a very bad break, indeed.
I no longer know what the thought was I was about to express.
But it will doubtless come back. It is now May 15th !)

In the interim, despite all the fritting away, certain phrases remain
lodged in the back of my head, the clue to the missing thread.
One of these is : ** II faudra bien qu'un jour on soit I'humanit^.'*
(Jules Romains.) Another (my own) is : " The worm in the
apple. Look for the worm ! " With these came the command to
look up the preface to Looking Backward (2000 to 1887 a.d.) by the
son of Edward Bellamy. This book — ^I cannot find the edition
346

LBTTBX TO rilRRl L1804IM

with his son's preface — ^had an unprecedented sale, one which
nearly rivaled the Bible.* It was translated into I don't know how
many languages. Today it is virtually forgotten. But here are a
few lines of Bellamy I find worth citing : " The long and weary
winter of the race is ended. Its summer has begun. Humanity
has burst the chrysalis. The heavens are before it." These words
were written before the end of the Nineteenth Century, just five
years, to be exact, before Whitman died. They follow not so very
long after these words of Whitman : " The poems of life are great,
but there must be the poems of the purport of life, not only in itself,
but beyond itself"

The worm in the apple . . I think that whenever or wherever the
worm makes its appearance it should be hailed as a sign of new Hfe.
We ought to call it the ** angel-wonn." Au fond there is no such
thing as literature, no such thing as art, religion, civilization. There
is not even such a thing as humanity. Au fond there is nothing
but life, life manifesting itself in myriad inscrutable ways. To
live, to be alive, is to partake of the mystery. The other night I
encountered a line, undoubtedly famous, of Heraclitus, which
goes thus: "To Hve is to fight for life." That line set me to pon-
dering. I could not beheve that by "to fight for" Heraclitus
meant merely the continuance of the struggle for existence. I could
not beheve that he was implying, like a stem realist, that the moment
we are born we are advancing towards death. I don't believe that
by " to fight for " he meant to defend or uphold life. I do not
know, I must admit, what the context was. But pondering over
tiese words I came to the conclusion that, whether HeracHtus
meant this or not, what he was saying was — ^life is the all, Ufe is the
only privilege, life knows nothing, means nothing, but Hfe ; the
fact of being alive means conscious allegiance, supreme faith, in
other words. From the moment we are bom we wage a struggle
against undefinable things. Nearly everything we glorify is in the
nature of commemoration, commemoration of our heroic struggle.
We put the struggle above the flux, the past and future above the

* I have just found Paul Bellamy's preface. Here are his words : "Looking
Backward, first published in the winter of 1887-8, won such universal accep-
tance that in the middle Nineties it was said that more copies of the volume
had been sold than of any book hitherto written by an American author,
with the two exceptions of Uucle Tom's Cabin and Ben Hut."

247

THF, BOOKS IN MY LIFE

present. But life bids us swim in the eternal stream. Cosmology
is the myth of the mystery of creation. When God answers Job
cosmologically it is to remind man that he is only a part of creation,
that it is his duty to put himself in accord with it or perish. When
man puts his head out of the stream of life he becomes self-conscious.
And with self-consciousness comes arrest, fixation, symbolized so
vividly by the myth of Narcissus.

The worm in the apple of human existence is consciousness. It
steals over the face of life like an intruder. Seen through the mirror
everything becomes the background of the ego. The seers, the
mystics, the visionaries smash this mirror again and again. They
restore man to the primordial flux, they put him back in the stream
like a fisherman emptying his net. There is a line firom Tete d'Or
of Claudel which runs : " Mais rien n*empechera que je meure
de mal de la mort, i moins que je ne saisisse la joie ..." A pro-
found and beautifiil utterance. The joy he speaks of is the joy of
surrender. It could be no other.

In my study of Balzac I cited a number of utterances from the
lips of Louis Lambert. I would like to give them again at this
juncture ..." My point is to ascertain the real relation that may
exist between God and man. Is not this a need of the age ? . . . If
man is bound up with everything, is there not something above
him with which he again is bound up ? If he is the end-all of the
unexplained transmutations that lead up to him, must he not be also
the link between the visible and invisible creations ? The activity
of the universe is not absurd ; it must tend to an end, and that end
is surely not a social body constituted as ours is ! ... It seems to
me that we are on the eve of a great human struggle ; the forces
are there, only I do not see the General ..."

The Balzac who wrote these lines, and others even more discern-
ing, more inspiring (in Seraphita), was not mistaken in his view
of things. No more than Edward Bellamy or Dostoievsky or Walt
Whitman.

I mentioned earlier in this letter that I had heard recently from
the man whom I looked upon as a master in my youth, and whom
I have written of in this book as " a living book " : John Cowper
Powys. With this letter came a new book of his called Obstinate
Cymric. In it is a chapter called Pair Dadeni, which is Welsh for
248

LETTER TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

" The Cauldron of Rebirth." I find in this book, especially in
this particular chapter, the same illuminating utterances which
characterize the works of those mentioned above. Speaking of the
change which is coming over humanity with the advent of our
entry into Aquarius, speaking of the "new revelation" being
granted us and which, he says, " may turn out to be the ^lan vital
in the heart of all life," he sutes :

Now what I am endeavouring to suggest in all this is
that the secret underlying the cause of fe great historic
change coming over the human race, this change so closely
connected with the movements of the heavenly bodies,
this change which impHes the passing forth out of the
two thousand years of the sign Pisces into the sign Aquarius ^
this change which produces the effect of a living body
slowly and dreadfully restored from death to Hfe, or even
of a hving infant emerging from a dying mother's womb,
may be nothing less than that very change of heart which
the prophets Iwve always spoken of and in which the
revivalists have always beHeved, a "change of heart,"
however, not by any means on the lines which the " law "
promulgated and the "prophets" predicted but on
entirely different lines, on lines startling and unexpected,
on lines in tune in fact with that **Stream of Tendency"
in Nature which is steadily moving, and moving in
defiance, not only of the Law and the Prophets, but of
both God and the Devil.

Let me quote a few more lines, for they concern us, our part
--or our refiisal to take part — ^in this new vision of things, this new
way of hfe.

None of us realize the character of the hidden current,
the occult wave, the unseen force, that is driving us forward.
Our immediate purpose, our immediate destination, seems
small and meagre compared with the driving force to
which we are obscurely yielding. We are like somnam-
bulists moving forward together, killing and being killed
in a huge world migration from one climate of thought
into another.

In the old cUmate out of which we are moving perforce,
whether we respond in blind faith or react in hostile
dismay, we can see the wavering lineaments and cloudy
shapes of the old totems and taboos that are disappearing.
With angry desperation wc cling to these fluctuant phan-

249

tm BOOKS Ilf MT ttPB

corns as they waver and undulate about us while we are
swept on,

Wc ourselves are the dying body that is falling back,
relaxed and faint, as the newborn utters its first cries, and
we ounelves are the newborn.

Yes, and the more desperately we cling, the more
angrily and recklessly we fling our wild accusations and
imprecations against this gravitational ground-tide, the more
surely are we forced on. "Fate leads die willing, drags the
unwilling."

We are no longer " on the eve of a great human struggle," as
Balzac wrote, we are in the very thick of it. And Pow)'S is right in
saying that it is the human soul which is in revolt The soul is sick
of this corpse-eadng worship of life ^^^lich humanity has celebrated
for the last few thousand years.

There is an American astrologer, Dane Rudhyar, who has vmtten
of this change which is coming over us more lucidly and penetrat-
ingly than any one I know o£ Many of his articles appeared in
die columns of a popular magazine devoted to astrology. His
books do not have a wide audience. If we were aware, if we were
in accord with the deeper movement, we would not banish such a
writer to the pages of a cheap magazine. That his name is associated
with the " pseudoscience " of astrology is enough to make his
utterances suspect Such is the opinion of educated people — ^and of
the uneducated. I mention him here only to say that he sees the
coming age as ** The Age of Plenitude." The cup will run over,
it will fertilize and invigorate the whole earth, all humanity. The
secret forces contained in this " golden vessel " will be the property
of all men. The world is not coming to an end, as so many now
seem to fear. What is coming to an end are the fetiches, super-
stitions, bigotries, the sterile forms of worship, the unjust terms
of social contract, which have converted the miracle of life into a
ceremony of death. We have nothing to lose but the corpse of life.
The chains will fall away with the mummy which they hold fast
to the earth. The slave does not free himself merely by hacking
away the shackles which fetter him. Once his spirit is liberated he
is free absolutely — and forever. The putrefaction has to be total
before there can be new life. Freedom has to manifest itself at the
roots before it can become universal.
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

America, like Russia, is hastening the process of putrefaction and
decomposition. These two great peoples, like busy angel-worms,
are tunneling through the very core of the apple in order to bring
about, unconscious on their part, the vital transmogrification. All
unconsciously, they are utilizing the new forces of life for their
own destruction. Europe, ever more conscious of beginnings and
ends, is appalled, paralyzed indeed, by the threat of extinction
which the play of these slumbering GoUaths represents. Europe
is for the conscious preservation of the old — and the timid, cautious
trying out of the new. Europe is not a sleepwalker. Europe is a
tired old man, weary of wisdom yet unable to show faith. Fear and
anxiety are the ruling passions. If America is like a fruit rotting
before it has ripened, Europe is like a valetudinarian Uving in a glass
cage. Everything that happens in the outside world is a threat
and a menace to this fragile self-made prisoner. This delicate,
long-suffering creature has experienced so many upheavals and
catastrophes that the very word " revolution," the very idea of an
" end," makes it shudder with fright. It does not want to beUevc
that "the winter of life is over." It prefers the freeze to the
thaw. No doubt ice too hates to surrender its rigidity. In working
its ceaseless transmutations Nature does not ask permission, even of
ice, to break it up into fluid elements. And that, I feel, is at the
bottom of the terror which has the European in its grip. He is
not being asked if he wishes to participate in the new, nameless,
terrifying order which is taking possession of the world. " If it is
what I sense taking place in Russia," he says, " if it is hke what
is gomg on in China or America or India, then I would rather not
have it." He is even ready to take his rehgion seriously, he thinks
to himself, if only it will avert the panic in his soul. The idea that
the new way of Hfe may be a godless one, the idea that the respon-
sibility may be wrested from God and conferred upon humanity
as a whole, only adds to his terror. He sees no cause for rejoicing
in the thought that the new dispensation may be man's. He is too
human, yet not human enough, to beUeve that authority should
rest with man, especially with "the common man." He has
wimessed revolutions from the top and revolutions from the
bottom, but no matter how they came about man always revealed
himself as a beast. And if you say to him, as Powys does, " Now it

251

THE BOORS IN MY LIFE

is the soul of man which is in revolt ! ** it is as if you said : " God
has become the Fiend of Creation." He can recognize the soul in
great works of art, he can detect its stirrings in the deeds of heroes,
but he dare not look upon the soul as the autochthonous rebel
situated at the very heart of the universe. To him creation is order,
and what threatens that order is of the devil. But the soul aims to
hbcrate itself from every thrall, even from the harmony of
creation. The soul of art may be defined, but the soul itself remains
undefinable. We are not to question the direction it takes, the aims
or the tasks it sets itself. We are to obey its dictates.

But nothing will prevent me from dying ol die disease
of death, unless I grasp joy . . .

Unless I put it in my mouth like an eternal food, like a
fruit that you crush between your teeth, and its juice gushes
deep down in your throat . . .

That is the language of the souL And this is the language of the
soul's own wisdom :

It is so clear that it takes long to see.
You must know that the fire which you are seeking
Is the fire in your own lantern.

And that your rice has been cooked from the very
beginning.

When I came to Europe I was so ove^oyed that I had escaped
from the homeland that I longed to remain in Europe forever.
** This is my place," I said, " here is where I belong." And then
I fotmd myself in Greece, which has ever been a Htde out of Europe,
and I thought I would remain there. But life seized me by the scru£f
of the neck and put me down again in America. Because of that
brief sojourn in Greece, because of what happened to me there,
I was able to say, truthfiilly at the time and truthfiilly still, I think :
" I can feel at home anywhere in the world." For a type like myself,
the hardest place to feel at home is home. You know that, I guess,
and perhaps you understand it. It took me an infinite time to realize
that " home " is a condition, a state of mind. I was ever in revolt
against places and conditions of being. But when I discovered
that " to be at home " was like being with God, the dread which
had attached itself to the word fell away. It became my business, or
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LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

better, my privilege^ to make myself at home at home. It would
have been easier for me to make myself at home anywhere on
earth, I think, than here in America. I miss Europe and I yearn for
Greece. And I am always dreaming of Tibet. I feel that I am much
more than an American ; I feel that I am a good European, a
potential Greek, Hindu, Russian, Chinese, and Tibetan too. And
when I read of Wales and her twenty thousand years of direct
descent from an earUer race of man, I feel like a bom Welshman.
I feel least of all like an American, though I am probably more an
American than anything else. The American in me which I acknow-
ledge and recognize, the American which I salute, if I must put
it that way, is the aboriginal being, the seed and the promise, which
took shape in " the common man " dedicating his soul to a new
experiment, establishing on virgin soil " the dty of brotherly
love." This is not the man who ran away from something, but
the man who ran towards something. The man destined no longer
to seek but to fulfill himself. Not renunciation, but acceptance.

" What would you say to one who comes to you with nothing ? "

" Throw it away ! "

This "mondo" was used to illustrate the thought that "we
must walk on even from spiritual poverty if this be used as a means
to grasp the truth of Zen."

The spiritual poverty of America is perhaps the greatest in the
world. It was not assumed to grasp the truth of Zen, that is a
certainty. But the Song of the Open Road is altogether American,
and it was sung by one who was not in any sense of the world
impoverished. It sprang from the optimism, from the inexhaustible
bounty, I might say, of one who was in complete accord with life.
It completes the message of St. Francis of Assisi.

Walk on ! Let go ! Cease squirming! —

Lawrence was fiightened, nay horrified, to think that this man
Whitman, in accepting everything, rejecting nothing, Hved with
all his sluices open— like some monstrous creature of the deep.
But could there be a more salutary, comforting image than this
human net adrift in the stream of life ? Where would you have man
anchor ? Where would you have him take root i h he not divinely
poised— in the eternal flux ?

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

Is there a road which eventually comes to an end ? Then it is
not the open road.

** We are such stuff as dreams are made of." Aye, and more.
Vasdy more. Life is not a dream. Dreams and Ufe intermarry,
and de Nerval has made of this faa the most haunting music. Dream
and dreamer are one. But that is not the all That is not even
cardinal. The dreamer who knows in his dream that he is dreaming,
the dreamer who makes no divorce between the dreams he dreams
with eyes shut and the dreams he dreams with eyes open is nearer
to the supreme realization. But the one who passes &om dream to
life, who ceases to sleep, even in the trance, who dreams no more
because he no longer hungers and thirsts, who remembers no more
because he has arrived at the Source, sudi a one is an Awakener.

My dear Lesdain, at this point I could conveniently bring my
letter to a close ; it has that *' ultimate *' ring which means the end.
But I prefer to reopen it and dose on a more human and immediate
note.

You remember that I mentioned ray Palestinian friend, Bezalel
Schatz, and how I visit him down the road occasionally. The other
day, going to town (Monterey), we fell to discussing Ac books
we had read and adored in our youth. It was not the first time we
had talked of such things. However, as he began to reel off die
tides of world-famous books which he had read in Hebrew, his
native tongue, I felt that I ought to tell you something of all this,
and through you the world.

I think the first time we opened this subject was when he dis-
covered on my shelf Loti*s Disenchanted. Beside it was Loti*s
Jerusalem^ which he had never read, never heard of, and he was
curious about it. You must know, of course, that we have had
many talks about Jerusalem, the Bible — especially the Old Testa-
ment— about characters like David, Joseph, Ruth, Esther, Daniel
and so on. Sometimes we spend the whole evening talking about
that strange desolate part of the world in which Mt. Sinai is located ;
sometimes it is about the accursed city of Petra, or about Gaza.
Sometimes it is about the wonderfiil Yemenite Jews who have in
Yemen (Arabia) one of the most interesting capitals in the world —
San'a. Or it may be about the Jews firom Bokhara who setded in
254

L8TTBR TO PIlHIB ttSDAtN

Jerusalem centuries ago and sdli preserve their ordinal tongue,
their manners and customs, their strange head-dress and their wond-
rous colorful costumes. Sometimes we talk about Bethlehem and
Nazareth, which to him are associated with very mundane
experiences. Or it may be about Baalbec or Damascus, both of
vifhidi he has visited.

Eventually we always return to literature. What started us o£f
yesterday was his recollection of the £rst book he had ever read.
And what do you suppose it might have been, considering that his
language was Hebrew and his home Jerusalem ! I almost fainted
away when I heard the name — Robinson Crusoe ! Another very
eariy one was Don Quixote, also read in Hebrew. Everything he
read was in Hebrew — until he grew older and learned English,
German, Frendi, Bulgarian, Italian, Russian and probably other
tongues. (Arabic he knew from childhood. He still swears in
Arabic — the ridiest language in the world for that, he maintains.)

" So Robinson Crusoe was the first book you ever read i ** I
exclaimed. *' It came near being the first for me, too."

" What about Gulliver's Traveb t You must have read that too."

" Of course ! " he said, " and Jack London's books — Martin
Eden, The Call of the Wild ... all of diem. But I remember
Martin Eden particularly." (So do I. Tlut book stuck long after his
others had £ided away. Many men have confessed the same to me.
It must have struck home !)

Here he began to talk about Mark Twain. He had read quite a
few of his books too. That surprised me. I couldn't quite conceive
of Mark Twain's quaint, piquant Americanese being rendered in
Hebrew. But apparendy it had been done successfully.*

Suddenly he said : '* But there was one thick book, a very thick
book, which I read with sheer deHght. I read it two or three times,
in fiurt . . . " He had to rack his brain for the tide. " Oh yes—
Pidtwick Papers ! " We checked on this and I found that at the very
same age I was poring over that book myself. Only / never got
through it. I didn't like it nearly as well as David Copperfield,
Martin Chuzzlewit, the Tale of Two Cities, or even, Oliver TwisL

* To my astonishment, when speaking of Babbit later, he confessed that
this book by Sinclair Lewis had given hmi a better picture of America than
any of Mark Twain's. The Stockholm Royal Academy made a similar
mistake in awarding the Nobel Prize to Lewis instead of Dreiser.

255

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

** And Alice in Wonderland ? " I cried. ** Did you read that too ? "

He couldn't recall whether he had read it in Hebrew or not»
but he had read it, he was certain, though in which language he
couldn't say. (Imagine trying to recall in what language you had
read this unique book !)

We went down the list, the names rolling off our tongues like
maple syrup.

'*Ivanhce"i

** You bet ! And how I That was a great book for me. Par-
ticularly the picture of Rebecca.** I was thinking how strange
indeed must this novel have seemed to a Httle boy in far-off Jeru-
salem. I had the strangest feeling of gladness — for Sir Walter Scott,
long dead and no longer concerned as to where his books might
penetrate. I wondered how a boy from Pekin or Canton would
react to this book. (I can never forget that Chinese student I knew
in Paris — Mr. Tcheou, I think it was. One day, upon asking him
if he had ever read Hamlet, he answered : " You mean that novel
by Jack London ? **)

Ivanhoe led us into a long detour. We could not help but talk
of Richard the Lion-Hearted and of Saladin. " You're the only
American I ever heard mention Saladin*s name," said Schatz.
" Why are you so interested in Saladin ? " I told him. " The Arabs
must have wonderful books about him," he concluded. Yes, I
thought, but where are they ? Why aren't we talking more about
Saladin ? Next to King Arthur, he's the most shining figure I can
think of

By this time I was prepared for any title he might mention.
It did not surprise me to hear that he had read The Last of the
Mohicans^ in Hebrew, or The Arabian Nights (a condensed version
for children — the only one I ever read !) ; it did not surprise me
any longer to learn diat he had read Balzac, d'Annunzio, Schnitzler
{Fraulein Elsa\ Jules Verne, Zola's Nana, The Peasants of R^ymont,
or even Jean Christophe, though I was indeed glad to hear of this
last. (" I congratulate you, Lillik ! That must have been a wonder-
ful experience.") Ah yes, to mention that book is to summon —
for every man and woman— some of the most soul-stirring hours
of youth. Whoever crosses the threshold of youth without having
read Jean Christophe has suffered an irreparable loss.
256

LBTTBR TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

" But who wrote that book called The Red Rose i "* he demanded.
" It's by a French author, Tm certain." It had made a deep impres-
sion on him, apparendy.

From this we skipped to The Mysteries of Paris, the works of
de Maupassant, S(^ho Tartarin de Tarascon (which he adored),
the strange short story or novelette by Tolstoy to which Tolstoy
gave two endings. (I know this one too, but I can't recall the tide.)
And then we came to Sienkiewicz. That man ! (That man Lincoln !
as some Southerners still say. Meaning : '* That pest ! That impos-
sible person ! ") Yes, no doubt every boy who first comes in
contact with this passionate Pole must exclaim : " That man I
Timt Polish writer ! " What a volcano he was ! So Polish ! If as
boys we could have spoken with the tongue of Amiel, might we
not have rhapsodized over Sienkiewicz as Amiel did over Victor
Hugo i Do you remember, by chance, this astounding passage
from Amiel's JourtMl Intime i Let me remark, before I quote the
passage, that we had been discussing The Man Who Laughs, which,
if I am not mistaken, makes a more lasting impression on young
people than Les Mis^rahles . , .

His [Hugo's] ideal is the extraordinary, the gigantic,
the overwhelming, the incommensurable. His most
characteristic words are immense, colossal, enormous, huge,
monstrous. He finds a way of making even child-nature
extravagant and bizarre. The only thing which seems
impossible to him is to be natural. In short, his passion
is grandeur, his fault is excess ; his distinguishing mark
is a kind of Titanic power with strange dissonances of
pueriHty in its magnificence. Where he is weakest is in
measure, taste, and sense of humor : he fails in esprit, in
the subtlest sense of the word . . . His resources are
inexhaustible, and age seems to have no power over him.
What an infinite store of words, forms and ideas he carries
about with him, and what a pile of works he has left
behind him to mark his passage ! His eruptions are like
those of a volcano ; and, fabulous workman that he is,
he goes on forever raising, destroying, crushing, and
rebuUding a world of his own creation, and a world rather
Hindoo than Hellenic ...

By a strange coincidence our talk of books switched to those

* Probably The Red Lily of Anatole France.

257

THE BOOKS IN MY LIP;

firebrands who sowed the whirlwind — ^Tamerlane, Genghis Khan,
Attik— whose names, I discovered, were as thrilling and terrifying
to Schatz as they are to everyone who reads of their bloody deeds.
A coincidence, I say, because the only long passages I had marked
in Amiel were on Hugo and these three scourges. Amid records
that he had been reading La Bantiihe Bleue. *' It is a Turk, Ou'igour,
who tells the story,** he says. He continues thus :

" Genghis proclaimed himself the scourge of God, and he did in
fact realize the vastest empire known to history, stretching from
the Blue Sea to the Baltic, and firom the vast plains of Siberia to
the banks of the sacred Ganges." (This is what we had been dis-
cussing, the fact that a Mongol had achieved this stupendous feat.) . . .
" This tremendous hurricane, starting from the high Asiatic table-
lands, felled the decaying oaks and worm-eaten buildings of the
whole ancient world. The descent of the first yellow, flat-nosed
Mongols upon Europe is a historical cyclone which devastated and
purified our Tliirteenth Century, and broke, at the two ends of the
known world, through two great Chinese walls — that which
protected the ancient empire of the Center, and that which made a
barrier of i^orance and superstition round the Uttle world oC
Christendom. Attila, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, ought to range in
the memory of men with Caesar, Charlemagne and Napoleon.
They roused whole peoples into action, and stirred the depths of
human life ; they powerfully affected ethnography, they let loose
rivers of blood, and renewed the face of things ..." A few lines
fardier, speaking of *' the revilers of war [who] are like the revilers
of diunder, storms and volcanoes," Amiel declares — and this is a
line which must have sunk deep in me, for whenever I encounter
it it resounds like a tocsin — "Catastrophes bring about a violent
restoration of equiUbrium ; they put the world brutally to rights.**
It is that last phrase which bums and sears : "They put the world
brutally to rights^

It is a long cry from Amiel to the Baron Munchausen tales and
to Jerome K. Jerome's Three Mett in a Boat (to say nothing of the
dog!). Once again I was bowled over. So in far-off Palestine another
young man had laughed himself silly over this stupid bit of humor !
Jerome K. Jerome in Hebrew ! I couldn't get over it. To think
258

LETTER TO PIERRE LESDAIN

that this atrociously funny book— funny only once, however ! —
was just as funny in Hebrew !

'* You must remember . . . please try ! . . . whether you read
Alice in Wonderland in Hebrew."

He tried, but he couldn't. Then, scratching his head, he said :
" Maybe I read it in Yiddish." (Put that in your pipe and smoke it !)

Anyway, suddenly he recalled that the original publisher of
most of these Hebrew translations was " Toshia," somewhere
in Poland. That seemed important to him at the moment. Like
when you suddenly recall not only the tide of a child's book but
the feel of the cover, the smell of the paper, the very heft of the
volume.

Then he informed me that practically all the Russian writers
had been translated into Hebrew very early. ** The whole works,"
he said. 1 thought of China, of the days of Sun Yat-sen, when the
same thing happened in that Celestial kingdom. And how, along
with Dostoievsky, Tolstoy, Gorky, Chekov, Gogol and the others,
the Chinese had swallowed Jack London and Upton Sinclair. It
is a wonderful moment in the life of a nation when it is first invaded
by foreign authors. (And to think that Httle Iceland reads more
authors, in translation, than any country in the world !)

Of course he had also read The Three Musketeers, The Count
of Monte Cristo and The Last Days of Pompeii, as well as Sherlock
Holmes and Poe's The Gold Bug. Suddenly he gave me another
warm thrill by mentioning Knut Hamsun's name. Yes, he had
read Hamsun, all he could lay hands on, and it was all golden.
(Pan, Hunger, Victoria, Wanderers, Segelfoss Town, Women at the
Pump , . .) Some titles he mentioned I had never heard of A
pang of regret went through me, followed immediately by a touch
of joy, for, thought I to myself, I am still aUve, I may yet find the
way to get these unknown books of Hamsun — even if I have to
read them in Norwegian !

" I read a number of authors from the Yiddish too," he suddenly
declared. " Read them in translation. Sholem Aleichem, of course.
But better than Sholem Aleichem, much better, was Mendele
Mocher-Sfarim ! "

** Do you remember Jacob Ben-Ami, the Jewish actor ? " I
asked. " Or Israel Zangwill ? "

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

" Israel Zangwill ! " he exclaimed in amazement.

I told him I had read Children of the Ghetto and had seen the
dramatization of The Melting Pot, of which Theodore Roosevelt
was so enamored. He shook his head in amazement.

" I can name one book," I said, " that I bet you never read in
Hebrew."

" What's diat > "

'• TJie Rivet in Grandfathers Neck ! "

" You got me there," he grinned. Then, to get even with me,
he countered : "I know one book youve never read. It was the
most wonderful book of all to me : Metnories of the House of David.
It was in many volumes, eight or ten at least."

"We ought to have a drink on that one," I suggested. But
instead we got off on the subject of the " lamedvovnik." According
to legend, " there are in the world not less than thirty-six (latued-vav)
righteous persons in every generation upon whom the Shekina
(God's radiance) rests."

After this detour we came back to a book which he had spoken
of several times before and always with the same passionate enthu-
siasm : Ingeborg, by a German named Kellermann. " He also wrote
The Tunneh a fascinating thing ^ la Jules Verne, don't forget that ! "
he shouted. " Maybe I haven't spelled it right, but it sounds like
that — ^Ingeborg or Inge6«r^. It was a love story. And what a love
story ! Like that book Site you're always talking about."

" I'll make a search for it," I promised. ** Here, write the name
down for me in my notebook." He wrote it down beside Robinson
" Krtiso " and " Baalzac " and " Zenkewitz." (English spelling still
bafHes him. There's no logic in it, he insists, and he's damned right.)

" If you ever write anything about all this," he said, ** don't
overlook Joseph Flauvius. It's a thick book about the last days of
die Jews ..."

But it was about Narcisse et Goldmund—in Hebrew, of course-
that we dwelt on at great length. In English, for some curious
reason, it is called Death and the Lover. I had come upon this book
of Hermann Hesse only a few years ago. It is one of those books
which profoundly affect the artist. There is magic in it and great
wisdom. " Life wisdom," as D. H. Lawrence would say. It is like
a " cadenza " to the metaphysics of art. It is also " a heavenly

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LETTER TO PIERRE LBSDAIN

discourse " carried on in die lower octaves. It celebrates the pain
and the triumph of art. To my friend Schatz, who had witoessed
the revival of art in Palestine, who had been directly implicated
through his father's activities, it had made an enormous appeal,
naturally. Whoever reads this book must experience in himself a
great revival of the eternal truth of art.

Under the spell of Narcisse et GoUmmd we rambled on— about
Jerusalem past and present, about the Arabs and how wonderful
they are when you know them intimately, about the banana
grove near Jericho which his father once owned together with
the Grand MufH, about the Yemenites again and their incomparable
ways, and finally about his father, Boris Schatz, who had founded
the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts in Jerusalem and who taught
his son all the arts, even as in days of old. Here he repeated the
anecdote about how his father succeeded in getting the first piano
into Palestine. This Htde story, so picaresque in its details, reminded
me of one of Cendrars* exotic passages (in Bourlinguer, I beHeve)
wherein he describes down to the last detail and with aU the resources
of his amazing clavier the thousand and one articles of commerce
(pianos included) which, loaded on the backs of beasts, gods and
men, appeared one day over the ridge of the Andes (he was then
in some remote South American village) and were transported
slowly, tantalizingly, from morning to dusk, to sea level. To me
this passage has die flavor of a mysterious sunburst : the great
burning orb becomes metamorphosed into a huge cornucopia
shedding not heat but an assortment of the most incongruous
objects imaginable, emptied finally by some super-gravitational
Kriss Kringle — in the midst of nowhere !

In all these discussions the magic name for me is Jericho. For
Schatz, Jericlio is a beautiful winter resort below sea level, to which
one descends from Jerusalem as on a toboggan slide. For me it is
not only " the walls " and the sound of the trumpet but an incon-
spicuous village on Long Island, whither, following the Jericho
Turnpike, I would race at top speed from Jamaica in preparation
for a workout with one of the famous six-day bike riders. How
different are the associations of names for different individuals !
I hardly dare tell you, for example, what Schatz associates with
the name Bethlehem. (" Always alive with whores ! ")

26l

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

One of the lasting impressions I shall retain of Palestine is his story
about the man who made Hebrew a Hving language once again.*
Doubtless there is always a " first one " where the revival of a
dead language is concerned. But who stops to think of that first
man in connection with Basque, Gaelic, Welsh and such weird
tongues ? (Perhaps these were never wholly " dead.**) However,
it was in our own generation that Hebrew was revived — and
through the simple act of a man teaching it to his four-year-old
son. Unquestionably there had been much talk of reviving it before
this celebrated moment. It remained, however, for someone to
put words into practice. Such an event is always in the nature of
a miracle ...

There is a sequel to this event, a little anecdote which Schatz
relates with relish, that I cannot omit. It is about a member of
the famous Habima troupe who, arriving for the first time in
Palestine, from Russia, where Hebrew was spoken only on the
stage (and in the synagogue), suddenly hears the urchins in the street
cursing and swearing in the ancient tongue. " Now I know that
it is a living language ! ** he exclaimed. I mention this to remark
that every time a language is revitalized it is through the adoption
and incorporation of the vulgar elements of that tongue. Everything
is nourished firom the roots.

" Tell me, Lillik,** I asked as we were nearing home, " why did
your father name his school Bezalel ? Did he name it after you or
were you named after the school ? **

He laughed. " You know that it means * in the shadow of God,*
of course. But that is merely its literal meaning.** He paused and
a glowing smile spread over his face. Suddenly he burst into
Hebrew. He went on and on — ^like an incantation it sounded.

" What arc you doing i ** I asked.

" I'm reciting some verses from Exodus — about Bezalel He was
the fint sculptor, didn't you know that ? He was more than that,
really. The first artist, you might say. Read your Bible ! Find the
part about the Ark of the Covenant. It's up your street. Jt's elaborate,
poetic, precise and never-ending ..."

Next morning I did as he had urged. And the first mention I

* Elic«er Ben-Yehuda, who also compiled the first Hebrew dictionary,
containing about 50,000 words.
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LETTER TO PIERRB 1. 1 S D ▲ I N

found of our chcr Bezaled was in Chapter 31 of Exodus, which
begins thus:

And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying.

See, I have called by name Bezaleel the son of Uri, the son
of Hur, of the tribe of Judah ;

And I have filled him with the spirit of God, in wisdom,
and in imderstanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner
of workmanship,

To devise amning works, to work in gold, and in silver,
and in brass.

And in cutting of stones, to set them, and in carving of
timber, to work in all manner of workmanship . . .

I read on and on, about the building of the tabernacle, about
the Ark of the testimony, about the altar of burnt offering, about
keeping the Sabbath holy, about the writing of God graven upon
the tables . . . And I came upon the verse in Chapter 35 (Exodus)
which reads : " Take ye firom among you an oflfering unto the
Lord ! whosoever is of a willing heart, let him bring it, an oflfering
of the Lord ; gold, and silver, and brass, and blue, and purple, and
scarlet, and fine linen, and goat*s hair, and rams* skins dyed red,
and badgers' skins, and shittim wood, and oil for the Ught, and
spices for anointing oil ... ** As I read on and on I got drunk
with the music of the words, for it is indeed intricate and elaborate,
precise and poetic, fiigitive and fixed, all this about the cunning
workmanship of Bezaleel and his " collaborators." And as I sat
there deep in reverie, I bethought me how deep was the vision of
Boris Schatz, the father of Bezalel, and with what loving patience,
with what heroic perseverance he labored to make the sons of
Israel capable, wise and ginning in the use of all the crafts, all the
arts, even the art of Juval. I saw that his son had imbibed this
knowledge and wisdom, this abiUty to devise curious works, even
from the cradle. And I whispered to myself: "Blessed be thy
name, Bezalel, for it is written into the very covenant between us ! "

And now, my dear Pierre Lcsdain, this is really the end ! In
journeying back to the early books we have come at last to the
Book of Books, to the Ark and the Covenant. Here let us rest in
peace and contentment.

Your friend.
May 2otht 1950. Henry Miller.

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XIII

READING IN THE TOILET

There is one theme connected with the reading of books which
I think worth dwelling on since it involves a habit which is wide-
spread and about which, to my knowledge, httle has been written —
I mean, reading in the toilet. As a youngster, in search of a safe place
wherein to devour the forbidden classics, I sometimes repaired to
the toilet. Since that youthful period I have never done any reading
in the toilet. Should I be in search of peace and quiet I take my book
and go to the woods. I know of no better place to read a good
book than in the depths of a forest. Preferably by a running stream.

I immediately hear objections. " But we are not all as fortunate
as you ! We have jobs, we travel to and from work in crowded
trams, buses, subways ; we have hardly a minute to call our own."

I was a " worker " myself right up to my thirty-third year. It was
in this early period that I did most of my reading. I read under
difficult conditions, always. I remember getting the sack once when
I was caught reading Nietzsche instead of editing the mail order
catalogue, which was then my job. How lucky I was to have been
fired, when I think of it now. Was not Nietzsche vasdy more
important in my life than a knowledge of the mail order business i

For four soUd years, on my way to and from the offices of the
Everlasting Portland Cement Co., I read the "heaviest" books.
I read standing up, squeezed on aU sides by straphangers like myself
I not only read during these trips on the " El," I memorized long
passages from these too-too-solid tomes. If nothing more, it was
a valuable exercise in the art of concentration. At this job I often
worked late into the night, and usually without eating lunch —
not because I wanted to read during my lunch hour but because
I had no money for lunch. Evenings, as soon as I had gulped down
my meal, I left the house to join my pals. In those yean, and for
many a year to come, I rarely slept more than four or five hours a
night. Yet I did a vast amount of reading. And, I repeat, I read
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READING IN THE TOILET

— for me, at least — the most difficult books, not the easiest ones.
I never read to kill time. I seldom read in bed, unless I was indisposed,
or pretending to be ill in order to enjoy a brief vacation. As I look
back it seems to me I was always reading in an uncomfortable position.
(Which is the way most writers write and most painters paint, I
find.) But what I read soaked dirough. The point is, if I must
stress it, that when I read I read with undivided attention and with
all the faculties I possessed. When I played it was the same thing.

Now and then I would go of an evening to the pubUc Hbrary
to read. That was like taking a seat in heaven. Often, on leaving
the library, I would say to myself: "Why don't you do this
oftener ? " The reason I did not, of course, was that life came
between. One often says " life ** when one means pleasure or any
foolish distraction.

From what I have gleaned through talks with intimate friends,
most of the reading which is done in the toilet is idle reading. The
digests, the picture magazines, the serials, detective stories, thrillers,
all the tag ends of Hterature, these are what people take to the
toilet to read. Some, I am told, have bookracks in the toilet. Their
reading matter awaits them, so to speak, as it does in the dentist's
office. Amazing with what avidity people comb through the
" reading matter," as it is called, which is piled high in the waiting
rooms of professional people. Is it to keep their minds off the painful
ordeal ahead i Or is it to make up for lost time, " to catch up,"
as they say, with current events ? My own Umited observations
teU me that these individuab have already absorbed more than
their share of " current events " — ^i.e. war, accidents, more war,
disasters, war again, murden, more war, suicides, war again, bank
robberies, war, and again war, hot and cold. Undoubtedly these
are the same individuals who keep the radio going most of the day
and night, who go to the movies as often as possible — ^where they
get more fresh news, more "current events" — and who buy
television sets for their children. All to be informed ! But what
do they really know that is worth knowing about these dreadfiilly
important, world-shaking events ?

People may insist that they devour the papers or glue their ears
to the radio (sometimes both at once !) in order to keep abreast
of world doings, but that b a sheer delusion. The truth is that the

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moment these sorry individuals are not active, not busy, they
become aware of an awesome, sickening emptiness in themselves.
It doesn't matter much, frankly, on what pap they feed, just o long
as they can avoid coming fece to face with themselves. To meditate
on the issue of the day, or even on one's personal problems, is the
last thing the normal individual wants to do.

Even in the toilet, where you would think it unnecessary to
do anything, or to think anything, where once during the day at
least one is alone with himself and whatever happens happens
automatically, even this moment of bliss, for it w a minor sort of
bliss, has to be broken by concentration on printed matter. Each
one, I assume, has his own favorite kind of reading matter for the
privacy of the toilet. Some wade through long novels, others read
only the fluffiest, flimsiest crap. And some, no doubt, just turn
the pages and dream. One wonders — ^what sort of dreams do they
dream i With what are their dreams tinged ?

There are mothers who will tell you that only in the toilet do
they get the chance to read. Poor mothers ! Life is indeed hard
on you these days. Yet, compared to the mothers of fifty years ago,
you have a thousand times more opportimity for self-development.
In your complete arsenal of labor-saving devices you have what
was lacking even to the empresses of old. If it was really " time "
you were eager to save, in acquiring all these gadgets, then you
have been cruelly deceived.

There are the children, of course ! When all other excuses foil,
there are always — " the children ! " You have kindergartens, play-
grounds, baby-sitters, and God knows what alL You give the kids
a nap after lunch and you put them to bed as early as you possibly
can, all according to approved " modem " methods. Bref, you
have as Htde to do with your young as possible. They get eliminated,
just like the odious household chores. All in the name of science
and efficiency.

(" Francais, encore un tout petit effort ...!")

Yes, dear mothers, we know that however much you do there is
always more waiting to be done. It is true that your job is never
finished. Whose is, I wonder i Who rests on the Seventh Day,
except God ? Who looks upon his work, when it is terminated,
and fmds it good i Only the Creator, apparendy.
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READING IN THE TOILET

I wonder sometimes if these conscientious mothers who are
always complaining that their work is never finished (an inverted
form of self-praise), I wonder, as I say, do they ever think to take
with them to the toilet, not reading matter, but the little jobs which
they have left undone ? Or, to put it another way, does it ever occur
to them, I wonder, to sit and meditate upon their lot during these
precious moments of complete privacy ? Do they ever, in such
moments, ask the good Lord for strength and courage to continue
in the path of martyrdom ?

How did our poor impoverished and woefully handicapped
ancestors ever accomplish all they did, is what I often wonder. Some
mothers of old, as we knowfirom the lives of great men, managed to
do a powerfiil lot of reading despite these grave "handicaps." Some
of them, it would almost seem, had time for everything. Not only
did they take care of their own children, teach them all they knew,
nurse them, feed them, clean them, play with them, make their
clothes (and sometimes the material too), not only did they wash
and iron everybody's clothes, but some at least also managed to
give their husbands a hand, especially if they were plain country folk.
Countless are the big and Httle things our forbears did unaided —
before ever there were labor-saving devices, time-saving devices,
before there were short cuts to knowledge, before there were
kindergartens, nurseries, recreation centres, welfare workers, moving
pictures and Federal reUef bureaus of all kinds.

Perhaps the mothers of our great men were also addicted to
reading in the toilet. If so, it is not commonly known. Nor have
I read that omnivorous readers— like Macaulay, Saintsbury and
R^my de Gourmont, for example — cultivated this habit. I rather
suspect that these Gargantuan readers were too active, too intent
on the goal, to waste time in this fashion. The very fact that they
were such prodigious readers would indicate that their attention
was always undivided. It is true, we hear of bibHomaniacs who read
while eating or while walking ; perhaps some have even been able
to read and talk at the same time. There is a breed of men who
cannot resist reading whatever falls within range of their eyes ;
they will read Uterally anything, even the Lost and Found notices
in the newspaper. They are obsessed, and we can only pity them.

A piece of sound advice at this juncture may not be amiss. If

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your bowels refuse to function, consult a Chinese herb doctor !
Don't read in order to divert your mind from the business at hand.
What the autonomic system Hkes, what it responds to, is thorough
concentration, whether upon eating, sleeping, evacuating or what
you will. If you can't eat, can't sleep, it's because something is
bothering you. Something is " on your mind " — ^where it shouldn't
be, in other words. The same is true of the stool. Rid your mind
of everything but the business at hand. Whatever you do, tackle
it with a free mind and a clear conscience. That's old advice and
sound. The modem way is to attempt several things at one and
the same time, in order " to make the most of one's time," as it is
said. This is thoroughly unsound, unhygienic, and ineffectual.
Easy does it ! ** Take care of the little things and the big ones will
take care of themselves." Everyone hean that as a child. Few ever
practice it.

If it is of vital importance to feed body and mind, it is of equal
importance to eliminate from body and mind what has served
the purpose. W^t is unused, "hoarded," becomes poisonous.
That's plain horse sense. It follows, therefore, as the night the day
that if you go to the toilet to eliminate the waste matter which
has accumulated in your system, you are doing yourself a disservice
by utilizing these precious moments in filling your mind with
" crap." Would you, to save time, think of eating and drinking
while using the stool i

If every moment of life is so very precious to you, if you insist
on reasoning to yourself that it is no negligible portion of one's life
which is spent in the toilet each day — some people prefer the
" W.C." or ** the John " to toilet — ^then ask yourself when reaching
for your favorite reading matter : " Do I need this ? Why ? "
(Cigarette smokers often do just this when trying to break the habit ;
so do alcoholics. It's a stratagem not to be despised.) Supposing —
and this is supposing a good deal ! — that you are one who reads
only the " world's best Hteraturc " on the stooL Even so, I say it
will pay to ask yourself : ** Dol need this ? " Let us assimie that it is
The Divine Comedy which you are going to resist reading. Suppose
that instead of reading this great classic you meditated on what
httle you had read of it, or on what you had heard about it. That
would mark a slight improvement. It would be still better, however,
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EADINC IN THE TOILET

not to mediute on literature at all but simply to keep your mind,
as well as your bowels, open. If you must do something, why not
offer up a silent prayer to the Creator, a prayer of thanks that your
bowels still function ? Think what a plight you would be in if they
were paralyzed ! It takes little time to offer up a prayer of this
sort, and with it goes the advantage of being able to take Dante out
in the sunlight, where you can commune with him on more equal
terms. I am certain that no author, not even a dead one, is flattered
by associating his work with the drainage system. Not even scato-
logical works can be enjoyed to the fullest in the water closet. It
takes a genuine coprophilist to make the most of such a situation.

Having said some harsh things about the modem mother, what
of the modem father ? I will confine myself to the American father,
because I know him best. This species of pater famiHas, we know
only too well, looks upon himself as a slave-driven, unappreciated
wretch. In addition to providing the luxuries, as well as the neces-
sities, of Hfe, he does his utmost to keep to the background as much
as possible. Should he have an idle minute or two, he beHeves it
his duty to wash dishes or sing the baby to sleep. Sometimes he
feels so driven, so harried, so abused, that when his poor overworked,
undernourished, lacklustre vdfe locks herself in the toilet — or
" the John " — for an hour on end he is about ready to break down
the door and murder her on the spot.

Let me recommend the following procedure, when such a crisis
occurs, to these poor devils who are at a loss to know what their
tme role is. Let us say she has been " in there " a good half hour.
She is not constipated, she is not masturbating, and she is not making
herself pretty. " Then wltat in hell is she doing in there ? " Careful
now ! I know how it is when you get to talking to yourself. Don't
let your temper get the best of you. Just try to imagine that, sitting
in there on the stool, is the woman you once loved so madly that
nothing would do but hitch up with her for life. Don't be jealous
of Dante, Balzac, Dostoievsky, if these be the shades she is com-
municating with in there. " Mayhe shes reading the Bible ! She's
been in there long enough to have read the whole of Deuteronomy."
I know. I know how you feel. But it's not the Bible she's reading,
and you know it. It's probably not The Possessed either, nor
Seraphita, nor Jeremy Taylor's Holy Limng. Could be Gone with

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the Wind. But what matter i The thing is— bcHcvc mc, brother,
it's always the thing ! — to try a different tack. Try questions and
answers. Like this, for example :

"What are you doing in there, darling i **

" Reading."

" What, may I ask ? "

" About the Battle of the Mame."

(Pretend not to be fazed by this. Continue !)

** I thought perhaps you were brushing up on your Spanish."

** What was that, dear i **

'* I said — is it a good yam i "

'* No, it*s borii^."

** Let me get you something eke."

" What's that, dear i "

" I said— would you like a cool drink while you're wading through
that stuff?"

"What stuflf?"

*• The Battle of the Mame."

** Oh, I finished that. I'm on something else now."

" Darling, do you need any reference books ? "

" You bet I do. I'd like an abridged dictionary— Webster's, if
you don't mind."

" Mind ? It's a pleasure. I'll fetch you the unabridged."

** No dear, the abridged will do. It's easier to hold."

(Here run up and down, as if searching for the dictionary.)

"Darling, I can't find either the abridged or the unabridged.
Will the encyclopaedia do ? What is it you're looking for— a
word, a date, or . . . ? "

" Dearest, what I'm really looking for is peace and quiet."

" Yes, dear, of course. I'll just clear the table, wash the dishes,
and put the children to bed. Then if you Hke I'll read to you. I've
just discovered a wonderfiil book on Nostradamus."

" You're so thoughtfiil, dear. But I'd rather just go on reading."

" Reading what > "

" It's called The Memoirs of Marshal Joffre, with a foreword by
Napoleon and a detailed study of the major campaigns by a professor
of military strategy — they don't give his name !— at West Point.
Does that answer your question, dearest ? "
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READING IN THE TOILET

" Perfectly.

(At this point you make for the axe in the woodshed. If there is
no woodshed, invent one. Make a noise with your teeth, as if you
were grinding the axe — ^Uke Minutten in Mysteries.)

Here is an alternative suggestion. When she is not looking place
a copy of Balzac's About Catherine de Medici in the water closet.
Put a marker at page 169 and underscore the following passage :

The Cardinal had just found himself deceived by
Catherine. The crafty Italian had seen in the younger
branch of the Royal Family an obstacle she could use to
check the pretensions of the Guises ; and, in spite of the
counsel of the two Gondis, who advised her to leave
the Guises to act vdth what violence they could against
the Bourbons, she had, by warning the Queen of Navarre,
brought to nought the plot to seize Beam concerted by the
Guises with the King of Spain. As this State secret was
known only to themselves and to Catherine, the Princes
of Lorraine were assured ofher betrayal, and they vdshed
to send her back to Florence ; but to secure proofe of
Catherine's treachery to the State — the House of Lorraine
was the State — the Duke and Cardinal had just made her
privy to their scheme for making away with the King of
Navarre.

The advantage of giving her a text like this to wresde with is
that it will take her mind completely off her houshold duties and
put her in a frame of mind to discuss history, prophecy or symboHsm
with you for the rest of the evening. She may even be tempted to
read the introduction written by George Saintsbury, one of the
world's greatest readers, a virtue or vice which did not prevent him
from writing tedious and superfluous prefaces or introductions to
other people's works.

I could, of course, suggest other absorbing books, notably one
called Nature and Man, by Paul Weiss, a professor of philosophy
and a logician, not of the first water merely, but of the " waters
reglitterized," a ventriloquist able to twist the brains of a rabbinical
pundit into a Gordian knot. One can read at random in this work
and not lose a shred of his distillated logic. Everything has been
predigested by the author. The text is comprised of nothing but
pure thought. Here is a sample, from the section on " Inference " :

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIPB

A necessary infefence difiers &oin a contingent one in
that die premise alone suffices to warrant the conclusion.
In a necessary inference there is only a logical relation
between premise and conclusion ; there is no principle
which provides content for the conclusion. Such an
inference is derivable from a contingent inference by
treating the contingent principle as a premise. C. S. Pierce
seems to have been the first to discover this truth. * Let
the premises of any argument,* he said, * be denoted by
P, the conclusion by C, and the principle by L. Then if
the whole principle be expressed as a premise the argument
will become L and P .*. C. But this new argument
must also have its principle which may be denoted by
L'. Now, as L and P (supposing them to be true), contain
all that is requisite to determine the probable or necessary
truth of C, they contain V. Thus L' must be contained
in the principle, whether expressed in the premise or not.
Hence every argimient has, as portion or its principle, a
certain principle which cannot be eliminated from its
principle. Such a principle may be termed a logical priti'
ciple* Every principle of inference, Pierce's observation
makes clear, contains a logical principle by which one
can rigorously proceed from a premise and the original
principle to the conclusion. Any result in nature or mind,
therefore, is a necessary consequence of some antecedent
and of some coune i^ch starts from that antecedent
and terminates in that result.*

The reader may wonder why I have not suggested Hegersj
Phenomenology of Mind, which is the acknowledged cornerstone ol
the whole nutcracker suite of intellectual hocus-pocus, or Wittge
stein, Korzybski, Gurdjieff & Co'. Why not, indeed ! Why not
Vaihinger's Philosophy of As If? Ot The Alphabet by David^
Diringer ? Why not The Ninety-Five Theses of Luther or Sir
Walter Raleigh's Preface to the History of the World ? Why not
Milton's Areopagitica ? All lovely books. So edifying, so instructive.

Ah me, if our poor American pater familias were to take this
problem of reading in the toilet to heart, if he were to give serious
thought to the most effective means of breaking this habit, what a
list of books might he not devise for a Five-Foot Privy Shelf !
With a Htde ingenuity he would manage either to cure his wife
of the habit or break her mind in the process.

* Nature and Man, by Paul Wdss ; Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1947-
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RBADING IN THE TOILBT

If he were truly ingenious he might think up a substitute for this
pernicious reading habit He might, for example, line the walls
of the '* watterre/* as the French call it, with paintings. How pleasant
soothing, lenitive and educational, while answering the call of Nature,
to let the eye roam over a few choice masterpieces of art ! For a
starter— Romncy, Gainsborough, Watteau, Dali, Grant Wood,
Soutine, Breughel the Elder and the Albright brothers. (Works
of art, incidentally, are no affront to the autonomic system.) Or,
if her taste did not run in these directions, he could line the walls of
the ** watterre ** with Saturday Evening Post covers or the covers of
Time, than which nothing could be more ** basic-basic," to use the
language of dianetics. Or he might, in his off-moments, busy
himself embroidering in many colored silks a quaint motto to be
hung at the level of her eyes when she takes her accustomed place
in the " wattm-e," a motto such as : Home is wherever you hang your
hat. This, since it involves a moral, might captivate her in ways
unimaginable. Who knows, it might free her from the cloying
clutches of the stool in record time !

At this point I think it important to mention the fact that science
has just discovered the efficacy, the dierapeutic efficacy, of Love. The
Sunday supplements are full of this subject. Next to Dianetics, die
Flying Saucers and Cybernetics, is is apparently the great discovery
of the age. The fact that even psychiatrists now recognize the validity
of love gives the stamp of approval which (seemingly) Jesus the
Christ, The Light of the World, was unable to provide. Mothers,
now awakened to this ineluctable fiict, will no longer have a problem
in dealing with their children, nor, "ipso facto," in dealing with
their husbands. Wardens will be emptying the prisons of their
inmates ; generals will be ordering their men to throw away their
arms. The millennium is just around the comer.

Nevertheless, and despite the approach of the millennium, human
beings will still be obliged to repair to the water closet daily. They
will still be confronted with the problem of how to use the time
spent therein most profitably. This problem is virtually a meta-
physical one. To give oneself up completely to the emptying of
one's bowels would, at first blush, seem the easiest and the most
natural thing in the world. To perform this function Nature asks
nothing of us but complete abeyance. The only collaboration she

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THE BOOKS IN MY LiPfi

demands is the willingness on our part to let go. Evidendy the
Creator, when designing the human organism, realized that it
were better for us if certain functions were allowed to take care of
themselves ; it is only too obvious that if such vital functions as
breathing, sleeping, defecating were left to our disposition, some of
us would cease to breathe, sleep, or go to the toilet. There arc
plenty of people, and they are not all in the asylum either, who see
no reason why we should eat, sleep, breathe or defecate. They not
only question the laws which govern the universe, they question
the intelHgence of their own organism. They ask why, not to know,
but to render absurd what is beyond their limited inteUigence to
grasp. They look upon the demands of the body as so much time
wasted. How then do they spend their time, these superior beings >
Are they completely at the service of mankind ? Is it because there
is so much ** good work " to do that they cannot see the sense of
spending time eating, drinking, sleeping and defecating ; It would
indeed be interesting to know what these people mean when they
speak of *' wasting time."

Time, time ... I have often wondered, if suddenly we were
all privileged to function perfecdy, what we would do with our time.
For the moment we think of perfect functioning we can no longer
retain the image of society as it is now constituted. We spend
the greater part of our life in contending against maladjustments
of all sorts ; everything is out of whack, from the human body to
the body poHtic. Assuming the smooth functioning of the human
body, with the correlative smooth functioning of the social body,
I ask : " What would we do with our time ? " To limit the problem
for the moment to one phase only — reading— tryt I beg you, to
imagine what books, what sort of books, one would then consider
necessary or worth while giving time to. The moment one studies
the reading problem &om this angle almost the whole of Uterature
falls away. We read now, as I see it, primarily for these reasons :
one, to get away from ourselves ; two, to arm ourselves against
real or imaginary dangers ; three, to " keep up " with our neighbors,
or to impress them, one and the same thing ; four, to know what is
going on in the world ; five, to enjoy ourselves, which means to
be stimulated to greater, higher activity and richer being. Other
reasons might be added, but these five appear to me to be the prin-
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READING IN THE TOIIET

cipal ones — and I have given them in the order of their current
importance, if I know my fellow man. It docs not take much
reflection to conclude that, if one were right with himself and all
was well with the world, only the last reason, the one which holds
least sway at present, would be vaHd. The others would fade away,
because there would be no reason for their existence. And even the
last-named, given the ideal conditions mentioned, would have Uttle or
no hold over us. There are, and always have been, a few rare
individuals who no longer have need of books, not even ** holy "
books. And these are precisely the enHghtened, the awakened
ones. They know full well what is going on in the world. They
do not regard Me as a problem or an ordeal but as a privilege and a
blessing. They seek not to fill themselves with knowledge but with
wisdom. They are not riddled with fear, anxiety, ambition, envy,
greed, hatred or rivalry. They are deeply involved, and at the same
time detached. They enjoy everything they do because they par-
ticipate direcdy. They have no need to read sacred books or act in a
holy way because they see life whole and are themselves thoroughly
whole — and thus everything to them is whole and holy.

How do tliese unique individuals spend their time ?

Ah, there have been many answers given to this query, many.
And the reason why there have been many answers is because
whoever is able to put such a question to himself has a different
type of " imique " individual in mind. Some view these rare
individuals as passing their life in prayer and meditation ; some
sec them moving in the midst of life, performing any and all tasks,
but never making themselves conspicuous. But no matter how one
looks upon these rare souls, no matter how much or how Htde
disagreement there may be as to the vaUdity or the cflScacy of their
way of Hfe, one quaHty these men have in common, one which
distinguishes them utterly from the rest of mankind and gives the
key to their personaHty, their raison d*^e : they have all tim
on their hands ! These men are never in a hurry, never too busy
to respond to a call. The problem of time is simply nonexistent
for them. They Uvc in the moment and they are aware that each
moment is an eternity. Every other type of individual that wc know
puts hmits on his " free " time. These other men have nothing
but free time.

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If I could give you a thought to take with you daily to the water
closet, it would be : " Meditate on free time ! " Should this thought
bear no fruit, then go back to your books, your magazines, your
newspapers, your digests, your comic strips, your thriller-dillen.
Arm yourselves, inform yourselves, prepare yourselves, amuse
yourselves, forget yourselves, divide yourselves. And when you
have done all these things (including the burnishing of gold, as
Ccnnini recommends), ask yoturselves if you are stronger, wiser,
happier, nobler, more contented beings. I know you will not be,
but that is for you to discover . . .

It is a curious thing, but the best kind of water closet — according
to the medicos — ^is one in which only an equilibrist could manage to
read. I refer to the kind one finds in Europe, France especially, and
which makes the ordinary American tourist quail. There is no
scat, no bowl, just a hole in the floor with two footpads and a hand-
rail on either side for support. One doesn't sit, one squats. (Les
vraies chiottes, quoi !) In these quaint retreats the thought of
reading never enters one's head. One wants to get done with it as
soon as possible — and not get one's feet wet ! We Americans,
through disguising whatever has to do with the vital functions,
end up by making " the John " so attractive that we linger there
long after we have done our business. The combination of toilet-
and-bath is to us just ducky. To take a bath in a separate part of the
house would strike us as absurd. It might not seem so to people
with truly delicate susceptibiHties.

Break ... A few moments ago I was taking a nap outdoors in
a heavy fog. It was a light sleep broken by the buzzing of a torpid
fly. In one of my fitfiil starts, half-asleep half-awake, there came to
me the remembrance of a dream, or to be exact, the fragment of a
dream. It was an old, old dream, and a very wonderfril one, which
comes back to me — in parts — again and again. At times it comes
back so vividly, even though through a chink, that I doubt if it
ever was a dream. And then I begin to rack my brain to recall
die tide of a series of books which I once kept safely hidden away
in a Utde vault. At this present moment the nature and content of
this recurrent dream is not as clear as it has been on previous
occasions. Nevertheless, the aura of it is still strong, as well as the
associations which usually accompany th? recall,
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READING IN THE TOILET

A moment ago I was wondering why it was that I thought of
this dream in connection with the toilet, but then suddenly I recalled
that in coming out of my fitful sleep, or half out of it, I brought
with me, so to speak, the frightfiil odor of the toilet which was
secreted in " the storm shed ** at home in that neighborhood which
I always telescope into " the street of early sorrows." In winter
it was a veritable ordeal to take refuge in this air-tight, sub-zero
cubicle which was never illuminated, not even by a flickering wax
taper in sweet oil.

But there was something else which precipitated the remembrance
of these days long past. Just this morning I was glancing over the
index given in the last volume of The Harvard Classics, in order to
refresh my memory. As always, the mere thought of this collection
awakens memories of gloomy days spent in the parlor upstairs
with these bloody volumes. Considering the morose frame of
mind I usually was in when I retreated to this funereal wing of the
house, I cannot help but marvel that I ever waded through such
literature as Rabbi Ben Ezra, The Chambered Nautilus, Ode to a Water-
fowl, I Promessi Sposi, Samson Agonistes, William Tell, The Wealth
of Nations, The Chronicles of Froissart, John Stuart Mill's Auto-
biography and such like. I believe now that it was not the cold fog
but the leaden weight of those days upstairs in the parlor, when I
was struggling with authors for whom I had no relish, that made
me sleep so fitfully just a Httle while ago. If so, I must thank their
departed spirits for making me recall this dream which has to do
with a set of magic books I prized so highly that I hid them away —
in a little vault — and never have been able to find them again. Is
it not strange that these books, books belonging to my youth,
should be of more importance to me than anything I have read
subsequently ? Obviously I must have read them in my sleep,
inventing titles, contents, author, everything. Now and then, as
I mentioned before, with flashes of the dream there come sometimes
vivid recollections of the very texture of the narrative. At such
moments I go almost frantic, for there is one book among the series
which holds the clue to the entire work, and this particular book,
its title, contents, meaning, comes at times to the very threshold
of consciousness.

One of the hazier, fuzzier, more tormenting aspects connected

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

with the recall is that I am always reminded — ^by whom i by what ?
— that it was in the neighborhood of Fort Hamilton (Brooklyn)
that I read these magic books. The conviction is forced upon me
that they are still secreted in the house wherein I read them, but
where this house is exactly, whom it belonged to, what business
brought me there, I have not the faintest notion. All that I can
recollect today about Fort Hamilton are the bike rides to and in
the vicinity which I took on lonely Saturday afternoons when
consumed with a forlorn love for my first sweetheart. Like a
ghost on wheels, I covered the same routine trajectory — ^Dyker
Heights, Bensonhurst, Fort Hamilton — ^whenever I left the house
thinking of her. So engrossed was I in thoughts of her that I was
absolutely unconscious of my body : I might be hugging the rear
right fender of a car at forty miles an hour or trailing along like
a somnambulist. I can't say that time hung heavy on my hands.
The heaviness was entirely in my heart. Occasionally I would be
roused from my reverie by the whizzing of a golf ball over my
head. Occasionally the sight of the barracks would bring me to,
for whenever I espy miUtary quarters, quarters where men are
herded like cattle, I experience a feeling almost of nausea. But
there were also pleasant intermissions— or " remissions " — if you
like. Always, for instance, when swinging into Bensonhurst where,
as a boy, I had spent such marvelous days with Joey and Tony.
How time had changed everything ! I was now, on these Saturday
afternoons, a young man hopelessly in love, an absolute mooncalf
utterly indifferent to everything else in the world. If I threw myself
into a book it was only to forget the pain of a love which was
too much for me. The bike was my refuge. Astride the bike, I
had the sensation of taking my painful love for an airing. The
panorama which unrolled before me, or receded behind me, was
thoroughly dreamlike : I might just as well have been riding a
treadmill before a stage set. Whatever I looked at served only
to mind me of her. Sometimes, in order I suppose not to tumble
off the wheel in sheer despair and chagrin, I would encourage those
fatuous fancies which assail the lovelorn, the wisp of a hope, let
us say, that in making a bend in the road who should be standing
there to greet me — and with such a warm, gracious, lovely smile !
— ^but she. If she failed to " materialize " at this point I would lead
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READING IN THE TOILET

myself to believe that it would be at some other point, towards
which, with prayers and propitiations, I would proceed to rush full
speed, only to arrive there breathless and again deceived.

Undoubtedly the mysterious magical nature of those dream books
had to do, and were inspired by, my pent-up longing for this girl
I could never catch up with. Undoubtedly, somewhere in the
neighbourhood of Fort Hamilton, in brief moments so black, so
grief-ridden, so desolate, so uniquely my very own, my heart must
have broken again and again. Yet — of this I am certain ! — those
books had nothing to do with the subject of love. They were beyond
such . . . such what ? They dealt with unutterable things. Even
now, foggy and time-bitten as the dream is in remembrance, I
can recall such dim, shadowy, yet revelatory elements as these :
a hoary, wizard-like figure seated on a throne (as in ancient stone
chess pieces), holding in his hands a bunch of large, heavy keys
(like ancient Swedish money), and he resembles neither Hermes
Trismegistus nor Apollonius of Tyana, nor even dread Merlin,
but is more like Noah or Methuselah. He is trying, it is so clear, to
tell me something beyond my comprehension, something I have
been longing and aching to know. (A cosmic secret, doubtless.)
This figure is out of the key book which, as I have emphasized,
is the missing link in the whole series. Up to this point in the narra-
tive, if it may be called that — that is to say, throughout the preceding
volumes of the dream collection — ^it has been a series of unearthly,
interplanetary, and, for want of a better word, "forbidden"
adventures of the most dazzling variety and nature. As if legend,
history and myth, combined with supra-sensual flights beyond
description, had been telescoped and compressed into one long
sustained moment of godlike fancy. And of course — for my especial
benefit ! But — ^what aggravates the situation, in the dream, is that I
can always recall the fact that I did begin the reading of the missing
volume but — ah, think of it ! — for no obvious, apparent, or even
hidden reason, certainly for no good reason, I dropped it. A sense
of irreparable loss smothers, Hterally flattens out, any rising sense
of guilt. Why, why, I ask myself, had I not continued the reading
of this book ? Had I done so, the book would never have been
lost, nor the others either. In the dream the double loss — loss of
contents, loss of book itself— is accentuated and presented as one. ^

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THB BOOKS IN MY LIFB

There is still another feature connected with this dream : my
mother's part in it. In The Rosy Crucifixion I have described
my visits to the old home, visits made expressly to recover my
youthful belongings — particularly certain books which would, for
some unaccountable reason, suddenly become on these occasions
very precious to me. As I relate it, my mother seems to have taken
a perverse delight in telling me that she had "long ago" given
these old books away. " To whom ? " I would demand, beside
myself. She could never remember, it was always so long ago.
Or, if she did remember, the brats to whom she had given them
had long since moved away, and of course she no longer knew
where they Hved, nor did she think — and this was ever gratuitous
on her part — that they would have kept these childish books all
this time. And so on. Some she had given, so she confessed, to the
Good Will Society or to the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul.
This sort of talk always drove me frantic. Sometimes, in waking
moments, I would actually wonder to myself if those missing dream
books whose titles had vanished from memory utterly were not real
flesh-and-blood books which my mother had thoughdessly,
recklessly given away.

Of course, all the time I was up there in the parlor wading through
the dreary five-foot shelf, my mother was just as baffled by this
behavior as by everything which it struck me to do. She could not
understand how I could " waste " a beautiful afternoon reading
those soporific tomes. That I was miserable she knew, but as to
why I was miserable she had never the faintest idea. Occasionally
she would express the thought that it was the books which depressed
me. And of coune they did help to depress me more deeply — since
they contained no remedy for what ailed me. I wanted to drown
myself in my sorrows, and the books were like so many fat, buzzing
flies keeping me awake, making my very scalp itch with boredom.

How I jumped the other day when I read in one of Marie CorelU's
now forgotten books : " ' Give us something that will endure ! *
is the exclamation of weary humanity. The things we have pass,
and by reason of their ephemeral nature are worthless. Give us
what we can keep and call our own forever ! * This is why we try
and test all things that appear to give proof of the supersensual
element in man, and when we find ourselves deceived by impostors
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READING IN THE TOILET

and conjurors, our disgust and disappointment arc too bitter to
even find vent in words."

There is another dream, concerning another book, which I tell
of in The Rosy Crucifixion. It is a very, very strange dream, and
in it there appears a big book which this girl I loved (the same one I)
and another person (her unknown lover probably) are reading over
my shoulder. It is my ovm book — ^I mean a book which I wrote myself.
I mention it only to suggest that by all the laws of logic it would
come about that the missing dream book, the key to the whole
series — what whole series ? — ^was written by myself and no other.
If I had been able to write it in a dream why could I not rewrite it in
a waking dream ? Is one state so different from another ? Since I
have ventured to hazard this much, why not complete the thought and
add that my whole purpose in writing has been to clear up a mystery.
(What this mystery is I have never given overdy.) Yes, from the
time I began to write in earnest my one desire has been to unload
this book which I have carried about with me, deep under my belt,
in all latitudes and longitudes, in aU travails and vicissitudes. To
dig this book out of my guts, make it warm, Hving, palpable — that
has been my whole aim and preoccupation . . . That hoary wizard
who appears in onirific flashes hidden away in a tiny vault — a
dream of a vault, you might say — ^who is he but myself, my most
ancient, ancient self i He holds a bunch of keys in his hands, does
he not i And he is situated in the key center of the whole mysterious
edifice. Well, what is that missing book, then, if not " the story of my
heart," as Jefferies so beautifiiUy names it. Is there any other story a
man has to tell but this ? And is this not the most di£5cult one of all to
teU, the one which is most hidden, most abstruse, most mystifying ?

That we read even in our dreams is a signal thing. What are
we reading, what can we be reading in the darkness of unconscious-
ness, save our inmost thoughts i Thoughts never cease to stir the
brain. Occasionally we perceive a difference between thoughts
and thought, between that which thinks and the mind which is all
thought. Sometimes, as if through a tiny crevice, we catch a glimpse
of our dual self Brain is not mind, that we may be certain of
If it were possible to localize the seat of mind, then it would be truer
to situate it in the heart But the heart is merely a receptacle, or
transformer, by means of which thought becomes recognizable and

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

effective. Thought has to pass through the heart to be made active
and meaningful.

There is a book which is part of our being, contained in our
being, and is the record of our being. Our being, I say, and not
our becoming. We commence the writing of this book at birth and
we continue it after death. It is only when we are about to be
reborn that we bring it to a close and write " Finis." Thus there
is a whole series of books which, from birth to birth, continue the
tale of identity. We are all authors, but we are not all heralds and
prophets. What we bring to Ught of the hidden record we sign
with our baptismal name, which is never the real name. But it is
only a tiny, tiny fraction of the record which even the best of us,
the strongest, the most courageous, the most gifted, ever bring to
Ught. What cramps our style, what falsifies the narrative, are those
portions of the record which we can no longer decipher. The art
of writing we never lose, but what we do lose sometimes is the art
of reading. When we encounter an adept in this art the gift of sight
is restored to us. It is the gift for interpretation, naturally, for to read
is always to interpret.

The universahty of thought is supreme and paramount. Nothing
is beyond comprehension or understanding. What fails us is the
desire to know, the desire to read or interpret, the desire to give
meaning to whatever thought be voiced. Acedia : the great sin
against The Holy Ghost. Drugged by the pain of deprivation, in
whatever form it manifests itself, and it assumes many, many forms,
we take refuge in mystification. Humanity is, in the deepest sense,
an orphan— not because it has been ahandoned, but because it
obstinately refiises to recognize its divine parentage. We terminate
the book of life in the afterworld because we reftise to understand
what we have written here and now . . .

But let us return to Us cabinets, which is the French for toilet
and, for some baffling reason, used always in the plural. Some of
my readers may recall a passage, one in which I give tender reminis-
cences of France, concerning a hurried visit to the toilet and die
wholly unexpected view of Paris which I had firom the window of
this tight place.* Would it not be fetching, some people think,

* See the chapter called " Remember to Remember *' from my book,
Rjtmember to Retnember ; New Directions, New York.
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READING IN THE TOILET

to SO build one's home that from the toilet seat itself one could
command a breath-taking panorama ? My thought is that it does
not matter in the least what the view from the toilet may be. If,
in going to the toilet, you have to take something else with you
besides yourself, besides your own vital need to eliminate and cleanse
the system, then perhaps a beautiful or a breath-taking view from
die toilet window is a desideratum. In that case you may as well
build a book shelf, hang paintings, and otherwise beautify this lieu
d*aisance. Then, instead of going outdoors and seeking a bo-trec,
one may as well sit in " the bathroom ** and meditate. If necessary,
build your whole world around " the John." Let the rest of the
house remain subordinate to the seat of this supreme function.
Bring forth a race which, highly conscious of the art of eHmination,
will make it its business to eUminate all that is ugly, useless, evil and
" deleterious " in everyday Ufe. Do that and you will raise the
toilet to a heavenly place. But do not, while making use of this
sacred retreat, waste your time reading about the elimination of this
or that, nor even about eUmination itself. The difference between
the people who secrete themselves in the toilet, whether to read,
pray or meditate, and those who go there only to do their business,
is that the former always find themselves with unfinished business on
hand and the latter are always ready for the next move, the next act.
The old saying is : " Keep your bowels open and trust in the
Lord ! " There's wisdom in it. Broadly speaking, it means that
if you keep your system free of poison you will be able to keep
your mind free and clear, open and receptive ; you will cease
worrying about matters which are not your concern — such as how
the cosmos should be run, for example — and you will do what has
to be done in peace and tranquillity. There is no hint or suspicion
contained in this homely piece of advice that, in keeping your
bowels open, you should also struggle to keep up with world events,
or keep abreast of current books and plays, or familiarize yourself
with the latest fashions, the most glamorous cosmetics, or the funda-
mentals of basic English. Indeed, the whole impHcation of this
curt maxim is — the less done about it the better. I say " it," meaning
the very serious — and neither absurd nor disgusting— business of
going to the toilet. The key words are ** open " and '* trust." Now,
if it be argued that to read while sitting on the stool is an aid to

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

loosening the bowek, then I say— read the most lenitive Hterature
possible. Read the Gospels, for the Gospels are of the Lord — and
the second injunction is " to trust in the Lord." Myself, I am con-
vinced that it is possible to have faith and trust in the Lord without
reading Holy Writ in the toilet Indeed, I am convinced that one
is apt to have more faith and tnist in the Lord if one reads nothing
at all in the toilet

When you visit your analyst does he ask you what you read
when using l^e stool i He should, you know. To an analyst it
should make a great difference whether you read one kind of Htera-
ture in the toilet and another elsewhere. It should even make a
difference to him whether you read or do not read — ^in the toilet.
Such matters arc unfortimately not widely enough discussed. It
is assumed diat what one does in the toilet is one's own private affair.
It is not. The whole universe is concerned. If, as we are led to
believe more and more, there are creatures from other planets who
are keeping tabs on us, be certain that they are prying into our
most secret doings. If they are able to penetrate the atmosphere
of this earth, what is to stop them from penetrating the locked doors
of our toilets i Give that a thought when you have nothing better
to meditate upon — ^in there. Let me urge those who are experiment-
ing vdth rockets and other interstellar means of communication and
transportation to think for a brief moment of how they must appear
to the denizens of other worlds when reading Time or The New
Yorkeft let us say, in " the John." What you read tells a good deal
about your inmost being, but it does not tell everything. The fact,
however, that you are reading when you should be doing has a
certain importance. It is a characteristic which men alien to this
planet would remark immediately. It might well influence their
judgment of us.

And if, to change the tune, we Hmit ourselves to the opinion of
merely terrestrial beings, but beings who are alert and discriminating,
the picture does not alter much. There is not only something
grotesque and ridiculous about poring over the printed page while
seated on the stool, there is something mad about it. This patho-
logical element evinces itself clearly enough when reading is
combined with eating, for example, or with taking a promenade.
Why is it not equally arresting when we observe it connected
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READING IN THB TOILBT

with the act of defecation ; Is there anything natural about doing
these two things simultaneously ? Supposing that, though you never
intended to become an opera singer, every time you went to the
toilet you began practicing the scales. Supposing that, though
singing was all in all to you, you insisted that the only time you
could sing was when you went to " the John." Or supposing you
simply said that you sang in the toilet because you had nothing
better to do. Would that hold water in an alienist's cabinet i But
this is the sort of alibi people give when they are pressed to explain
why they must read in the toilet.

To merely open the bowels, then, is not enough i Must one
indude Shakespeare, Dante, William Faulkner and the whole galaxy
of pocket-book authors i Dear me, how complicated life has
become ! Once upon a time any old place would do. For
company one had the sun or the stars, the song of the birds or the
hooting of an owl. There was no question of killing time, nor
of killing two birds with one stone. It was just a matter of letting
go. There wasn't even the thought of tnist in the Lord. This
trusting in the Lord was so impHcit a part of man's nature that
to connect it with the movement of the bowels would have seemed
blasphemous and absurd. Nowadays it takes a higher mathematician,
who is also a metaphysician and an astrophysicist, to explain the
simple functioning of the autonomic system. Nothing is simple
any more. Through analysis and experiment the sUghest things
have assumed such complicated proportions that it is a wonder any
one can be said to know anything about anything. Even instinctive
behavior now appears to be highly complex. Primitive emotions,
such as fear, hate, love, anguish, all prove to be terribly complex.

And we are the people, heaven forbid, who in the next fifty
years are going to conquer space ! We are the creatures who, though
scorning to become angels, are going to develop into interplanetary
beings ! Well, one thii^ is certainly predictable : even out there
in space we shall have our water closets ! Wherever we go, "the
John " accompanies us, I notice. Formerly we used to ask : " What
if cows could fly ? " That joke has become antediluvian. The
question which now imposes, in view of projected voyages beyond
the gravitational pull, is : '* How will our organs function when
we are no longer subjea to the sway of gravity ? " Traveling at a

?85

THE BOOKS IN MY LIPE

rate faster than the speed of thought — it has been hazarded that
we may be able to accomplish this !— will we be able to read at all
out there between the stars and planets ? I ask because I assume
that the model space ship will be equipped with lavatories as well
as laboratories, and, if so, our new time-space explorers will
undoubtedly bring with them their toilet literature.

There is something to conjure upon — the nature of this interspatial
literature ! We used to sec questionnaires from time to time demand-
ing to know what we Vould read if we were going to take refuge
on a deserted island. No one, to my knowledge, has yet framed
a questionnaire as to what would make good reading on the stool
in space. If we are going to get the same old answers to this coming
questionnaire, i.e., Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, ct Cie, I shall indeed
be cruelly disappointed.

That first ship to leave the earth, and possibly never return— what
I would not give to know the tides of the books it will contain !
Mcthinks the books have not been written which will oflfer
mental, moral and spiritual sustenance to these daring pioneers.
The great possibility, as I sec it, is that these men may not care to
read at all, not even in the toilet : they may be content to time in
on the angels, to listen to the voices of the dear departed, to cock
their ears to catch the ceaseless celestial song.

286

XIV

THE THEATRE

Dbama is the one category of literature into which I have delved
more than any other. My passion for the theatre goes so far back
that it almost seems as if I were bom backstage. From the age of
seven I started going to the vaudeville house called The Novelty,
on Drigg*s Avenue, Brooklyn. I always went to the Saturday
matinfe. And alone. The price of admission to " nigger heaven "
was then a dime. (It was the golden period when you really could
get a good cigar for ten cents.) The doorman. Bob Maloney, an
ex-pugilist with the broadest, squarest shoulders I have ever seen,
stood guard over us with a stout rattan stick. I remember this
individual better than any of the acts or actors I saw there. He was
the villain who dominated my troubled dreams.

The first play I was taken to was Uttcle Toms Cabin. I was just
a tiny tot and, as I recall it, the play made no impression upon me
whatever. I do, however, recall that my mother wept copiously
throughout the performance. My mother loved these tear jerkers.
I don't know how many times I was dragged to see The Old Home"
stead (with Denman Thompson), Way Down East, and similar
favorites.

There were two other theatres in this neighbourhood (The Four-
teenth Ward) to which I was also taken by my mother at intervals :
The Amphion and Corse Payton's. Corse Payton, often referred
to as "the worst actor in the world," put on melodramas of the
ten-twenty-thirty variety. Years later my father and he became
drinking companions, something no one would have dreamed
of in the days when Corse Payton's name was a byword throughout
Brooklyn.

The first play to make an impression on me — ^I wasn't more than
ten or eleven at the time^was WinCt Woman and Song. It was a jolly*
bawdy performance, featuring the diminutive Lew Hcam and the
ravishing Bonita. As 1 see it now, it must have been a glorified

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THE BOOKS IN MY LIFB

burlesque show. (" Wer licbt nicht Wein, Wcib und Gcsang,
bleibt ein Nan sein Leben lang/') The most astonishing thing
connected with this event is that we occupied a box all to our-
selves. The theatre, which I doubt if I ever entered again— it
reminded me somehow of an old French fortress — ^was called The
Folly, and stood at the comer of Broadway and Graham Avenue,
Brooklyn, of course.

By this time we had shifted from the glorious Fourteenth Ward
to the Bushwick Section (" The Street of Early Sorrows "). A Uttle
distance from us, in the neighbourhood called East New York,
where everything seemed to come to a dead end, a stock company
gave performances in a theatre called The Gotham. Once a year
somewhere in this dismal vicinity Forepaugh & Sells spread their
huge circus tents. Not very far away were a Chinese cemetery, a
reservoir and a skating pond. The only play I seem to recall from
this no man's land is Alias Jimmy Valentine. But I undoubtedly saw
there such monstrosities as Bertha^ The Sewing Machine Girl and
Nelliet the Beautiful Cloak Model. I was still going to granmiar
school. The life of the open street was vastly more exciting to me
than the claptrap reality of the theatre.

It was during this period, however, in vacation time, that I would
visit my cousin in Yorkville where I was bom. Here in the smnmer
evenings over a pint of ale my uncle would regale us with memories ^
of the theatre of his day. {The Bowery After Dark was probably still
nmning.) I can still see my imcle, a fat, lazy, jovial man with a
strong German accent, sitting at the bare round table in the kitchen,
always in a fireman's undershirt I can see him spreading the
programs out — they were the long playbills printed on newspaper
stock, even then yellow with age, which were handed out at the
gallery entrances. Fascinating as were the names of the plays, the
names of the players were even more so. Such names as Booth,
Jefferson, Sir Henry Irving, Tony Pastor, Wallack, Ada Rehan,
R^ane, Lily Langtry, Modjeska, still ring in my ears. They were
the days when the Bowery was all the rage, when Fourteenth
Street was in its heyday, and when the great stage figures were
imported from Europe.

Every Saturday night, so my uncle said, he and my father used
to go to the theatre. (A pattern I was soon to follow with my
288

Henry Miller as a hoy with his Parents and Sister

THE THEATRE

buddy, Bob Haase.) It seemed almost incredible to me, because
from the time I came into the world my father had nothing more
to do with that world. My uncle neither, for that matter. I mention
this fact to emphasize my astonishment when one day, while work-
ing part-time for my father at the tailor shop — I was then about
sixteen — he asked me if I would like to accompany him to the
theatre that evening. Major Carew, one of his cronies from the
Wolcott Bar, had bought tickets for a play called The Gentleman
from Mississippi. He had suggested taking me along because of an
actor whom he thought I would enjoy seeing, an actor who was
just coming into prominence, and wha was none other than Douglas
Fairbanks. (Thomas Alfred Wise, of course, played the leading
role.) But what was more thrilling to me than the prospect of seeing
Douglas Fairbanks was the fact that I was about to enter a New York
theatre for the first time, and in the evening ! Strange company
to be in, too, my father and the dissolute Major Carew, who, from
the time he arrived in New York, was never sober for an instant.
It was only years later that I reahzed I had seen Douglas Fairbanks
in his greatest stage success.

That same year, in company with my German teacher from
High School, I made my second visit to a New York playhouse — the
Irving Place Theatre. It was to see Alt Heidelberg. That event,
which stands out in my mind as a thoroughly romantic one, for
some strange reason, was soon overshadowed by my initiation into
burlesque. I was still going to High School when an older boy
(from the old Fourteenth Ward) asked me one day if I would not
like to go with him to The Empire, a new burlesque theatre in
our neighborhood. Fortunately I was already wearing long pants,
though I doubt if my beard had yet begun to sprout. That first
burlesque show I shall never forget.* From the moment the curtain
rose I was trembling with excitement. Until then I had never seen
a woman undressed in pubhc. I had seen pictures of women in
tights from childhood, thanks to Sweet Caporal cigarettes, in every
package of which there used to be a Httle playing card featuring
one of the famous soubrettes of the day. But to see one of these
creatures in life on the stage, in the fiiU glare of a spotHght, no, that
I had never dreamed of Suddenly I recalled the Uttle theatre in

* Krausetneyer's Alley, with Sliding Billy Watson.

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the old neighborhood, on Grand Street, called The Unique, or as
tve called it, " The Bum." Suddenly I saw again that long Saturday
night queue outside, pushing and milling around to squeeze through
the door and catch a glimpse of that naughty httle soubrette, Mile, de
Leon {life called her Millie de Leon), the girl who flimg her garters
to the sailors at each performance. Suddenly I recalled those lurid
billboards that flanked the entrance to the theatre, showing
ravishing female figures of luxurious heft displaying all their billowy,
sinuous curves. At any rate, from that momentous day when I
first visited The Empire I became a devotee of burlesque. Before
long I knew them all — Miner's on the Bowery, The Columbia,
The Olympic, Hyde & Beeman's, The Dewey, The Star, The
Gayety, The National Winter Garden — all of them. Whenever
I was bored, despondent, or pretending to search for work, I headed
either for the burlesque or the vaudeville house. Thank God, there
were such glorious institutions in those days ! Had there not been,
I might have committed suicide long ago.

But speaking of billboards . . . One of the strange recollections
I have of this period is of passing a billboard announcing the play
Sapho. I remember it for two reasons : first, because it was posted
on the fence next to the old house where I knew my best days —
shockingly close, so to speak — and second, because it was a lurid
poster, openly revealing a man in the aa of carrying a woman, clad
only in a thin nightgown, up a long flight of stairs. (The woman
was Olga Nethersole.) I knew nothing then of the scandal which
the play had roused. Neither did I know that it was the dramatiza-
tion of Daudet's famous book. I didn't read Sapho until I was
eighteen or nineteen ; as for the celebrated Tartarin books, I must
have been well in my twenties before I came upon them.

One of the most beautiful souvenirs of the theatre which I retain is
the memor)' of the day my mother took me to the open air casino in
Ulmer Park. Though it is highly improbable, I still have the notion
that it was Adeline Patti I heard sing that day. At any rate, for a
mere lad of eight or nine, just getting ready to wimess the turn of
the century, it was like a trip to Vienna. In *' the good old summer
time " it was, of a day so spankingly bright and gay that even a dog
would remember it (Poor Balzac, how I pity you, you who ron-
fessed that you had known only three or four happy days in all
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your life !) On this golden day even the awnings and parasols were
brighter and gayer than ever before. The little round table at which
we sat, my mother, sister and I, danced with golden reflections cast
by brimming steins and mugs, by long slender glasses of Pilsener,
by brooches, earrings, laveliers, lorgnettes, by gleaming belt buckles,
by heavy gold watch chains, by a thousand and one trinkets so dear
to the men and women of that generation. What good things
there were to eat and drink ! And the program— so Hvely, so scin-
tillating ! All headliners, doubtless. I couldn't get over the fact
that boys my own age, or so it seemed, dressed in swaggering
costumes, were employed to come out after each act and walk
across the entire length of the stage— just to post the next number
at each wing. They did it bowing and smiling. Very important
adjuncts. The waiters, too, intrigued me, the way they balanced
the heavy trays, the Hghtning-Hke way they made change, and
with it all so polite, so cheerful, so utterly at ease. The whole
atmosphere of the place was decidedly Renoir.

As soon as I was old enough to go to work — I started at seventeen
— there began those wonderful Saturday afternoon and evening
sprees at the beaches. Irene FrankHn (" Red Head ") at the Brighton
Beach Music Hall, another open-air theatre, stands out prominently
in my memory. But more vivid still is the remembrance of an
unknown zany who was then making " Harrigan '* famous. It
was again a hot day, with a beautiful breeze coming from the ocean,
and I had on a new straw hat with a large polka dot band. To
enjoy the song and dance cost only ten cents. But what I can*t
forget is the enclosure itself, a circular tier of benches exposed to
the sky and hardly big enough for a monkey to do his stunts in.
Here, on a rude, springy platform, this unknown minstrel gave one
performance after another — from noon to midnight. I went back
to hear him several times that day. I went back expressly to hear
him sing :

H . . . A . . . dooble R . . . I
- G ... A ... N spells Harrigan
Divil a man can say a word agin me . . .

And so on. Ending with —

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It's a name that a shame
Never has been connected with
Harrigan ! that's me ! .

Why this ditty should have infatuated me I don't know.
Undoubtedly it was the poor fried songbird, the vitaHty of the
man, the leer and flimflam, the deHcious brogue he had, plus the
torture he was suflering.

A strange and roseate period, the turn of the century that refused
to come to an end. The Edison phonograph, Terry McGovem,
WiUiam Jennings Bryan, Alexander Dowie, Carrie Nation, Sandow
the Strong Man, Bostock's Animal Show, Mack Sennett comedies,
Caruso, Little Lord Fauntleroy, Houdini, Kid McCoy, the Hallroom
Boys, Battling Nelson, Arthur Brisbane, the Katzenjammer Kids,
Windsor McKay, the Yellow Kid, The Police Gazette, the Molineaux
Case, Theda Bara, Annette Kellerman, Quo Vadis, The Haymarket,
Ben Hur, Mouquin's, Considine's, Trilby^ David Hamm, Peck's Bad
Boy, the Gilsey House, the Dewey Theatre, Stanford White, the
Murray Hill Hotel, Nick Carter, Tom Sharkey, Ted Sloan, Mary
Baker Eddy, die Gold Dust Twins, Max Linder, In the Shade of
the Old Apple Trie, the Boer War, the Boxer RebeUion, ** Remem-
ber the Maine," Bobby Walthour, Painless Parker, Lydia Pinkham,
Henry Miller in The Only Way . . .

When and where I first saw Charleys Aunt I no longer remember.
I know only this, that it remains in my mind as the funniest play
I ever saw. Not until the movie called Turnabout did I see anything
to make me laugh as hard. Charley s Aunt is one of those plays
which hit you below the belt. There's nothing you can do but
succumb to it. It has been playing ofl* and on now for over fifty
years, and I presimie it will go on being played for another fift)'
yean to come. No doubt it is one of the worst plays ever written,
but what matter i To keep an audience in stitches for three fiill
acts is a feat. What amazes me is that the author, Brandon Thomas,
was British. In Paris, years later, I discovered a theatre on the
Boulevard du Temple — Le D^'aaref— which specialized in broad,
sidesplitting farces. In this old bam of a place I had more belly
laughs than in any theatre except the fiimous Palace Theatre on
Broadway — " the home of vaudeville."
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From the time I began going to High School until I was twenty
or so I went regularly every Saturday night with my chum, Bob
Haase, to the Broadway Theatre, Brooklyn, where the hits from the
Manhattan stage would be shown after they had had their run.
We usually stood up in the back of the orchestra. In this way I
saw at least two hundred plays, among them such as The Witching
HouTy The Lion and the Mouse, The Easiest Way^ The Music Masteft
Madame X, Camille, The Yellow Ticket, The Wizard of Oz, Tite
Servant in the House, Disraeli, Bought and Paid For, The Passing of
the Third Floor Back, The Virginian, The Man from Home, The Third
Degree, Damaged Goods, The Merry Widow, The Red Mill, Sumurun,
Tiger Rose. My favorites then, among the stars, were Mrs. LesUe
Carter, Lilly Maddem Fiske, Leonore Ulric, Frances Starr, Anna
Held. Quite a motley company!

As soon as I started going to the New York theatres I branched
out in all directions. I frequented all the foreign theatres as well
as the httle theatres, such as the Portmanteau, the Cherry Lane,
The Provincetown, the Neighborhood Playhouse. And of course
I went to the Hippodrome, the Academy of Music, the Manhattan
Opera House and the Lafayette in Haarlem. I saw Copeau's group
a number of times, at the Garrick, and the Moscow Art Players
and the Abbey Theatre Players.

Curiously enough, a performance which stands out in my memory
is that given by an unprofessional group, all youngsters, at the
Henry Street Settlement. I was invited to attend the performance
(an Elizabethan play) by a messenger then working for me at the
telegraph company. He had only lately been released from prison,
where he had served sentence for robbing a small post office in
the South of a few stamps. To see him in doublet and hose — ^he
played the leading role — declaiming with grace and distinction —
was a most pleasurable shock. The whole evening stands out in
my mind in much the same way as does the magical scene in Four-
nier*s The Wanderer which I have mentioned so often. Time and
again I went back to the Henry Street Settlement hoping to rcHvc
the enchantment of that first evening, but such things happen only
once in a lifetime. Not so far away, on Grand Street, was the
Neighborhood Playhouse which I visited frequently and where —
another memorable occasion ! — ^I saw Joyce's Exiles performed.
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Whether it was the period or because I was young and impres-
sionable, many of the plays I saw during the Twenties are unfor-
gettable. I will mention just a few : Androcles and the Lion, Cyrano
de BergeraCy From Mom till Midnight, Yellow Jacket, The Playboy of
the Western World, Him, Lysistrata, Francesca de Rimini, Gods of the
Mountain, The Boss, Magda, John Ferguson, Fata Morgana, The Better
*Ole, Man of the Masses, Bushido, Juno and the Paycock.

In the early days of The Deepthinkers and the Xerxes Society*
I had the good fortune to be invited by a pal of mine to the ** best "
theatres, where we occupied ** choice seats." My friend's boss
was an inveterate theatre-goer. He had plenty of money and he
enjoyed indulging his every whim. Sometimes he invited the whole
gang of us — twelve healthy, jolly, rowdy, lusty youngsters — to
accompany him to a "good show." If he got bored he would leave
in the middle of the performance and go to another theatre. It
was through him that I saw Elsie Janis, our great idol, for the first
time, and also that Uttle queen, Elsie Ferguson — " Such a Little
Queen ! " Bonnie days they were. Not only the best seats in the
house but afterwards a cold snack at Reisenweber's, Bustanoby's
or Rector's. Trotting firom place to place in horse cabs. Nothing
was too good for us. " Ah ! never to be forgotten days ! "

At the tailor shop, when I took to working full time for the
old man — a sudden switch from the Savage School where I was
training to become an athletic instructor (sic !) — I made the acquain-
tance of another wonderful prince, the eccentric Mr. Pach of Pach
Brothers, photographers. This lovable old man never handled
money. Everything he desired he got through barter, including
the use of a car and a chauffeur. He had connections and affiliations
everywhere, it seemed, not least of them being with the directors
of the MetropoHtan Opera, Carnegie Hall and such places. The
result was that whenever I wished to attend a concert, an opera, a
symphonic recital or a ballet, I had only to telephone old man
Pach, as we called him, and a seat was waiting for me. Now and
then my father made him a suit of clothes or an overcoat. In return
we received photographs, all sorts of photographs, oodles of them.
And so, in this pecuHar way — rather miraculous to me ! — I heard

* See Plexus, Book Two of The Rosy Crucifixion, for a full picture jof these
clubs which played such an important part in my early life.

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in the Space of a few years virtually everything of note in the realm
of music. It was an invaluable education, worth far more than all
the other pedagogic rigmarole I was put through.

As I said a while ago, I beHeve I have read more plays than novels
or any other form of literature. I began this reading of plays via
The Harvard Classics, that five-foot shelf recommended by old
Dr. Foozlefoot Eliot. First ancient Greek drama, then Elizabethan
drama, then Restoration and other periods. The real impetus,
however, as I have remarked a number of times, was given me by
Emma Goldman through her lectures on the European drama,
in San Diego, back in 1913. Through her I launched heavily into
Russian drama, which, with ancient Greek drama, I feel most at
home in. The Russian drama and the Russian novel I took to with
the same ease and sense of familiarity as I did Chinese poetry and
Chinese philosophy. In them one always finds reality, poetry and
wisdom. They are earth-bound. But the dramatists I envy, the ones
I would imitate if I could, are the Irish. The Irish playwrights I
can read over and over again, without fear of satiation. There is
magic in them, together with a complete defiance of logic and a
humor altogether unique. There is also darkness and violence, to
say nothing of a natural gift for language which no other people
seem to possess. Every writer employing the English language is
indebted to the Irish. Through them we get gHmmerings of the
true language of the bards, now lost except for a remote comer
of the world such as Wales. Once having savored the Irish writers,
all other European dramatists seem pale and feeble in their expression.
(The French more than any, perhaps.) The one man who still
comes through, in translation, is Ibsen. A play like The Wild Duck
is still dynamite. Compared to Ibsen, Shaw is just " a talking
fool."

Aside from a few performances I attended during a short visit
to America from France — Waiting for Lefty, The Time of Your Life,
Awake and Sing I — I have not been to the theatre since that memor-
able production of Hamsun's Hunger (with Jean-Louis Barrault)
given in Paris in 1938 or '39. It was rendered in expressionistic
manner, a la Georg Kaiser, and remains a worthy end to my theatre-
going days. Today I have not the least desire to enter a theatre.
Finished, the whole business. I would rather see a second-rate movie

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than a play, though I must confess that the movies too have lost
their hold over me.

It may seem strange that, despite my great interest in the theatre,
I have never written a play. I tried my hand at it once, many years
ago, but got no farther than the second act. It was obviously more
important then for me to Hue the drama than to give expression
to it. Besides, it is probably true that I have no talent in this direction,
which I regret.

But even if I no longer go to the theatre, even if I have abandoned
all thought of writing for the theatre, the theatre remains for me
a realm of pure magic. In potency, the Elizabethan drama — exclud-
ing Shakespeare whom I cannot abide — ranks second only to the
Bible. For me. Often in my mind I have compared this period
with the age which produced the great Greek dramatists. What
never fails to impress me is the utter contrast, in language, between
these two periods of drama. The Greek is simple, straightforward
language, imderstandable to anyone of inteUigence ; the Elizabethan
language is tumultuous and unbridled, meant for poets, though the
audience (of that day) was largely made up of the mob. In Russian
drama we again have the simplicity of the Greeks ; the machinery,
however, is of another order.

What all good drama has in common, I find, is its readability.
And this is the drama's supreme defect. The drama to come will
lack this virtue. As "Hterature" it will be almost meaningless.
The drama has yet to come into its own. And this cannot come
about until the structure of our society is radically, fimdamentally
altered. Antonin Artaud, the French poet, actor, playwright, had
illuminating ideas on this subject, some of which he exposed in a
tract called Le Theatre de la Cruauti* What Artaud proposed
was a new kind of participation by the audience. But this we shall
never have until the whole conception of" theatre " is transformed.

Books tend to separate, the theatre to unite us. The audience,

* " Mais, et c'est ici la nouvcaut^, il y a un c6t^ virulent et je dirai mSme
dang^reux de la po6sie et de I'imagination a retrouver. La po6sie est une
force dissociative et anarchique, qui par I'analogie, les associations, les images,
ne vit que d'un boulcversement des rapports communs. Et la nouveaut^
sera de bouleverscr ces rapports non seulcmcnt dans le domaine ext6rieur,
dans le domaine de la nature, mais dans le domaine intdrieur, c'est i dire,
dans cclui de la psychologie. Comment, c'est mon secret." (Antonin Artaud,
in *' Comoedia,' September 21, 1932.)
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like jelly in the hands of a capable playwright, never knows greater
sohdarity than during the brief hour or two which it takes to give
a performance. Only during a revolution is there anything com-
parable to this togetherness. Used rightly, the theatre is one of
the greatest weapons in the hands of man. That it has fallen into a
state of decay is but another sign of the degenerate times. When the
theatre lags it means that life is at a low ebb.

To me the theatre has always been like a bath in the common
stream. To experience emotion in the company of a crowd is
indeed tonic and therapeutic. Not only are the thoughts, deeds
and personages materialized before one's eyes, but the effluvium
in which all swims also envelops the audience. In identifying them-
selves with the players, the spectators re-enact the drama in their
own minds. An invisible super-director is at work. Moreover, in
each spectator there is another, unique drama going on parallel
with the one which he is witnessing. All these reverberative dramas
coalesce, heighten the visible, audible one, and charge the very walls
with a psychic tension which is incalculable and, at times, almost
unbearable.

Even to become acquainted with one's own language it is neces-
sary to frequent the theatre. The talk of the boards is of a different
order from the talk of books or the talk of the street. Just as the
most indehble writing belongs to the parable, so the most indeUble
speech belongs to the theatre. In the theatre one hears what one is
always saying to oneself We forget how much silent drama we
enact every day of our Hves. What issues from our Ups is infinitesimal
compared to the steady stream of recitative which goes on in our
heads. Similarly with deeds. The man of action, even the hero,
Hves out in deed but a fraction of the drama which consumes him.
In the theatre not only are all the senses stimulated, enhanced,
exalted, but the ear is tuned, the eye trained, in new ways. We
are made alert to the unfailing significance of human actions. Every-
thing which occurs on the stage is focused, as if through a distorting
lens, to meet the angle of expectation. We not only sense what is
called destiny, we experience it individually, each in his own way.
In that narrow strip beyond the footlights we all find a common
meeting place.

When I think of the numerous performances I have attended, and

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in SO many diflfercnt tongues, when I think of the strange neighbor-
hoods in which these theatres were located and of my journeys
homeward, often on foot, often through bitter gales or through
slush and mud, when I think of the truly extraordinary personaUties
that impinged on my being, of the multitudinous ideas which I
experienced vicariously, when I think of the problems of other
epochs, other peoples, and of the magical and mysterious denominator
which permitted me to grasp them and suffer them, when I think
of the effects which certain plays had upon me, and through me
upon my associates or even people unknown to me, when I think
of this tide of blood, of sap, of dark, mottled thought pumping itself
out in words, gestures, scenes, climaxes and ecstasies, when I think
how utterly, inexorably human was all this, so human, so salutary,
so remarkably universal, my appreciation of all that is connected
with plays, playwrights and play actors is augmented to the point of
extravagance. To take one form of theatre alone, the Yiddish,
which seems so bizarre, so aHen — ^how remarkably close and
intimate it is, now that I look back on it. In the Yiddish play there
is usually a Httle bit of everything which goes to make up life —
dancing, joking, horseplay, weddings, fiinerals, idiots, beggars,
feasts, to say nothing of the usual misunderstandings, problems,
anxieties, frustrations and so on which complicate modern drama.
(I am thinking, of course, of the ordinary Jewish play, intended for
the masses and therefore "concocted," like a good stew.) One
need not know a word of the language to enjoy the spectacle. One
laughs and weeps easily. One becomes thoroughly a Jew for the
nonce. Leaving the theatre, one asks : " Am I not also a Jew ? "
With the Irish, the French, the Russian, the Italian drama the same
thing occun. One becomes all these aUen creatures in turn, and
in doing so becomes more himself, more human, more like the
universal self. Through the drama we find our conmion and our
individual identity. We realize that we are star-bound as well as
earth-bound.

Sometimes, too, we find ourselves citizens of a world utterly
unknown, a world more than human, a world such as perhaps
only the gods inhabit. That the theatre can produce this effect,
with its very Hraitcd means, is worthy of note. The inveterate
theatre-goer, the person who enjoys being taken out of himself,
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who imagines possibly that he has found a way to live other people's
lives as well as his own, is inclined to forget that what he gets from
the play which holds him so absorbed is only what he puts into it
of himself In the theatre so much has to be taken for granted,
so very much has to be divined. One's own small Hfe, if examined
exteriorly, would never suffice to explain the close rapport between
audience and players which every good dramatist establishes. In
the exterior life of the humblest individual there is drama inexhaus-
tible. It is from this inexhaustible reservoir that the playwright draws
his material. This drama which goes on ceaselessly in every one's
breast trickles through in mysterious ways, hardly ever formulating
itself in spoken words or in deeds. Its overtones form a vast ocean,
a vaporous ocean, on which here and there a frail bark of a play
appears and disappears. In this vast ocean humanity is constantly
sending forth signals, as if to the inhabitants of other planets. The
great playwrights are no more than sensitive detectors flashing
back to us, momentarily as it were, a line, a deed, a thought. The
stuff of drama is not in the events of daily life ; drama lies in the
very substance of life, embedded in every cell of the body, every
cell of the myriad substances which envelop our bodies.

I am one of those individuals frequently accused of reading into
things more than they contain, or more than was intended. This
is a criticism levelled against me particularly where the theatre or
the cinema is concerned. If it is a failing, it is one that I am not
ashamed of I have Uved in the midst of drama from the time
I was old enough to understand what was happening round and
about me. I took to the theatre at an early age, as a duck takes to
water. For me it was never just recreation, it was the breath of Hfe.
I went to the theatre to be restored and rejuvenated. With the
rising of the curtain and the lowering of the Ughts I was prepared
to accept imphcitly what would be unfolded before my eyes.
A play was not only as real to me as the life about me, the life in
which I was immersed,^ it was more real. Looking backward, I
must admit that much of it was ** Hterature," much sheer claptrap.
But at the moment it. was life, Ufe at its fullest. It colored and
influenced my everyday life. It pervaded that Hfe sensibly and
irrevocably.

This faculty of overlooking — for it was an overlooking and not

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a failure to see properly — what the critical mind terms mere play*
acting, this faculty which I deUberately nurtured, was bom of a
refusal to accept things at face value. At home, in school, in church,
in the street, wherever I went, I was impregnated with drama.
If it was to obtain a repUca of daily life, then I had no need for the
theatre. I went because from a tender age I shared, preposterous
as this may sound, the secret intentions of the playwright. I sensed
the everlasting presence of a universal drama which had deep,
deep roots, vast and unending significance. I did not ask to be lulled
or seduced ; I asked to be shocked and awakened.

On the stage, personality is everything. The great stars, whether
comedians, tragedians, buffoons, impersonators, mountebanks or
sheer zanies, are engraved as deeply in my memory as are the great
characters in Uterature. Perhaps more so, since I knew them in the
flesh. We are obHged to imagine how Stavrogin or the Baron de
Charlus spoke, how they walked, gestured, and so on. Not so
with the great dramatic personages.

There are Hterally hundreds of individuals I could speak of at
length who once strode the boards and who still, if I but close my
eyes, are declaiming their lines, working their mysterious magic.
There were theatrical couples who exerted such a strong sentimental
influence that they were nearer and dearer to us than the members
of our own family. Noray Bayes and Jack Norworth, for example.
Or James and Bonnie Thornton. Sometimes whole families endeared
themselves to us, such as Eddie Foy's and George M. Cohan's.
Actresses particularly took possession of our fancy as no other type
possibly could. They were not always great actresses either, but their
personahties were radiant, magnetic, hauntingly so. I think of a
cluster of them immediately — Elsie Janis, Elsie Ferguson, EflSe
Shannon, Adele Ritchie, Grace George, Alice Brady, Pauline Lord,
Anna Held, Fritzi Scheff, Trixie Friganza, Gertrude Hoflfman,
Miimie Dupree, Belle Baker, Alia Nazimova, Emily Stevens, Sarah
Allgood — and of course that dark, blazing figure whose name I
am sure no one will recall, Mimi AgugUa. The fact that they were
flesh and blood, and not phantom creations of the screen, endeared
them to us even more. Sometimes we saw them in their weak
moments ; sometimes we watched them breathlessly, knowing that
their hearts were really breaking.
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The same pleasure one has in discovering his own books, his own
authors, holds for the figures of the stage as well. We may have
been told, as youngsters, that it was imperative to sec ("before
they die ") such as John Drew, William Faversham, Jack Barrymore,
Richard Mansfield, David Warfield, Sothem and Marlowe, Sarah
Bernhardt, Maude Adams— but our great joy came in discovering
for ourselves such personaHties as Holbrook Blinn, O. P. Heggie,
Edward Breese, Tully Marshall, Mrs. Patrick Campbell, BJchard
Bennett, George Arliss, Cyril Maude, Elissa Landi, Olga Chekova,
Jeanne Eagcls and others, many, many othen, now almost legendary.

The names, however, which are inscribed in my book of memory
in letters of gold are those of the comedians, largely from vaudeville
and burlesque. Let me mention — for old times' sake— just a few :
Eddie Foy, Bert Savoy, Raymond Hitchcock, Bert Lev>% WiUic
Howard, Frank Fay. Who could be immune to the powers of these
spellbinders i Better than any book, for me, was a mating in which
one of these appeared as a headliner. Often, at the Palace, there was
an all-star program. I would no more have missed such an event
than I would the weekly gathering of the Xerxes Society. Rain
or shine, job or no job, money or no money, I was always there. To
be with these " men of mirth " was the best medicine in the world,
the best safeguard against melancholy, despair or frustration. I can
never, never get over the reckless way they gave of themselves.
Sometimes one of them would intrude upon the other fellow's act,
creating with each irruption hysteria and pandemonium. The
funniest book in the world* cannot rival, for me, a single per-
formance of any of these individuals. There is not a single book I
know of in the whole of Hterature which can keep one laughing
throughout. The men I speak of could not only keep one chuckling,
they could keep one in stitches. One laughed so hard and so con-
tinuously, in fact, that one felt Uke begging them to stop their
antics for just a moment or two. Once they had the audience started
it was scarcely necessary to do or say anything. A mere waggle of
the fingers was sufficient to make one explode.

The man I liked best of all was Frank Fay. I adored him. I could
sec him of a mating and go back in the evening to see him all over
again, to laugh even harder the second or the third time. Frank

* What is the title, by the way ? I would give anything to know !

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Fay impressed me as a man who could put on an act without the
slightest preparation, a man who could hold the stage alone for ten
or fifteen hours, if he chose. And who could vary the performance
from day to day. To me he seemed possessed of inexhaustible wit,
intention, inteUigence. Like many another great comedian, he
knew when and how to cross the borderline into the realm of the
forbidden. He got away with murder, Frank Fay. He was irresis-
tible, even to the censors, I imagine. Nothing, of course, can so
rouse the risibiUtics of an audience as an incursion into the realm of
the perverse and forbidden. But Frank Fay had a thousand tricks
up his sleeve. He was indeed ** a one-man show."

In passing I must make mention of an actor whom I saw only
in one play, whom I never heard of again after his enormous success
in The Show Off. I mean Louis John Bartels. Like Charleys Aunt,
this play, which owed so much to Bartels* acting of it, remains a
landmark in my memory. I can think of nothing quite like it. Again
and again I went back to see it, especially to hear that raucous,
blatant, infectious haw-haw-haw ! of Bartels, who was " the
show off."

As far back as I can remember, I seem to be aware of voices
speaking inside me. I mean by this that I was forever conducting
conversation with these other voices. There was nothing "mystical"
about this. It was a form of intercourse which ran concurrently
with other forms of intercourse I indulged in. It could go on
simultaneously while I held open conversation with another.
Dialogue ! A constant dialogue. Before I began the writing of
books I was writing them in my head — in this smothered sort of
dialogue I speak of One more capable of self-analysis than myself
would have realized early in Ufe that he was destined to write.
Not I. If I thought about it at all — I mean this ceaseless, interior
dialogue— it was merely to tell myself that I was reading too much,
that I should stop chewing the cud. I never thought of it as unnatural
or exceptional. Nor is it, except in the degree which it may attain.
Thus it often happened that, while listening to some one, I heard
his speech transmuted in varying ways, or, while giving close heed
to his words, I would interpolate my own words, would embroider
his words with others of my own, more piquant, more dramatic,
more eloquent ; sometimes, indeed, after I had heard a person
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through, I would repeat the gist of his words in three or four ways,
giving them back to him as if they were his own, and in doing so
derive huge enjoyment in seeing him swallow his own words and
marvel at their apmess, their acuteness, or their profundity and
complexity. It was these performances which often endeared
people to me, often people whom I had not the shghtest interest
in but who became attached to me much as they would to a clever
mountebank or a sleight-of-hand artist. It was the mirror in which
they saw themselves lucidly and flatteringly. It never occurred to
me to deflate their egos : I enjoyed the game and was happy that
they entered into it all unknowingly.

But what was this, or it, if not a sort of perambulating theatre
in the first person > What was I doing ? Creating character, drama,
dialogue. Schooling myself, no doubt, and utterly without intention
or prevision, for the task to come. And this task i Not to mirror
the world, not to render back a world, but to discover my own
private world. The moment I say " private " world I realize that
this is precisely what I have always lacked, what I have struggled
more to obtain, or establish, than anything else in Hfe. To unburden
myself, therefore, is like writing another chapter of Revelation.
The better part of my life I have spent in the theatre, though it may
not have been a recognized playhouse. I have been author, actor,
stage director and script itself I have been so saturated with this
never-ending drama, my own and others' combined, that just to
take a walk alone is comparable to turning on Mozart or Beethoven.*

It was about eighteen yean ago, sitting in the Cafe Rotonde
in Paris, that I read Robinson Jeflfers* Women at Point Sur, never
dreaming that I would one day be hving near Point Sur at a place
called Big Sur, which I had never heard of Dreams and life !
Little did I dream, when listening to the hbrarian of the Montague
Street Library in Brooklyn tell of the marvels of the Cirque Medrano,

* In the preface to the first volume of his celebrated roman-fleuue, Jules
Romain writes : "I wish that it will be understood that some episodes lead
nowhere. There are destinies which fmish none knows where. There are
beings, enterprises, hopes, which one no longer hears about. Meteors which
disintegrate, or aperiodic comets of the human firmament. A whole pathos
of dispersion, of fading away, of which life is full, but which books nearly
always ignore, preoccupied as they are, in the name of old rules, with
beginning and finishing the game with the same cards." {Hommes de bonne
uolonte.) "

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that the first article I should write on arriving in Paris, the dty of
my dreams, would be on the Cirque Medrano, and that it would
be accepted by ElHot Paul (of Transition) and published in the Paris
Herald. Little did I realize, on the occasion of our brief meeting in
Dijon — at the Lyc^ Camot — that the man I was talking to would
one day be the man to start me off on this book. Nor did I think,
when at the Caf6 du D6me, Paris I was introduced to Femand
Crommelynck, the author of that celebrated and magnificent play,
Le Cocu Magtiijique, that it would be fifteen years or more before
I would read his play. Little did I realize, when attending the per-
formance of the Duchtss of Malfi in Paris, that the man responsible
for the superb translation of the play would soon become my
translator and friend, that he and no other would lead me to the
home of Jean Giono, his Hfelong friend. Little did I imagine either,
when seeing Yellow Jacket (written by the Hollywood actor, Charles
Cobum), that I would encounter in Pebble Beach, California, the
celebrated Alexander F. Victor (of the Victor Talking Machine
Co.), who, talking of the thousand and one deHghtful experiences
of his rich life, would end the conversation with a dithyramb on
Yellow Jacket. How could I foresee that it would be in a fiu:-off
place called Nauplia, in the Peloponnesos, that I would see my
first shadow play, and with such an astounding companion as
Katsimbalis ? Or, enamored as I was of burlesque (often following
a troupe from town to town), how was I to surmise that in far-off
Athens I would one day sec the same type of performance, the
same type of comedian, hear the same jokes, catch the same leer
and banter i How could I possibly foresee that that same evening
(in Athens), about two in the morning, to be exact, I should
encounter a man I had seen only once before in my life, a man
I had been merely introduced to, but whom I remembered as the
one who came out of the stage door of the Theatre Guild after a
performance of Werfel's Goat Song i And is this not a strange
coincidence, that only now, just a few minutes ago, in glancing
at my copy of The Moon in the Yellow River— a grand, grand play
by Dennis Johnston — ^I notice for the first time that it was played
by the Theatre Guild in New York, probably a year or two before
my friend Roger Klein asked me t» help him widi the French
translation of it. And though there may not be the least connection
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between the two, this also strikes me as curious and coincidental,
that the first time I heard a French audience hiss was in a cinema in
Paris during a showing of my beloved Peter Ibbetson. ** Why are
they hissing ? " I asked. " Because it is too unreal/* my friend
replied.

Ah yes, strange memories. Walking down the dusty streets of
Heraklion, on my way to Knossos, what do I see but a huge poster
announcing die coming of CharHe ChapHn at the Minoan cinema.
Could anything be more incongruous ? The Minotaur and the
Gold Rush ! Chaplin and Sir Arthur Evans. Tweedledum and
Tweedledee. In Athens, some weeks later, I noticed the billboards
advertising the coming of several American plays. One of them,
bcheve it or not, was Desire Under the Elms. Another incongruity.
At I>elphi, a natural setting for Prometheus Bound, I sit in the amphi-
theatre listening to my friend Katsimbalis recite the last oracle
delivered there. In a split second I am back in " The Street of Early
Sorrows," upstairs in the parlor, to be precise, reading one after
another of the Greek plays given in Dr. Foozlefoot's Five-Foot
Shelf. It is my first acquaintance with that grim world. The real
one follows much later, when at the foot of the citadel at Mycenae
I inspect the graves of Clytemnestra and of Agamemnon . . .
But that lugubrious parlor ! There, always alone, sad, forlorn,
the last and the least of human kind, I not only tried to read the
classics but I also listened to the voices of Caruso, Cantor Sirota,
Mme. Sdiumann-Heink—even to Robert Hilliard, reciting "A
Fool diere was ..."

As from some other existence there intrude now memories, rich,
glorious memories, of that Uttle theatre on the Boulevard du
Temple (Le Dejazct), where I would laugh from beginning to end
of the performance, my belly aching, the tears streaming down
my face. Memories of Le Bobinot, rue de la Gaiete, where I listened
to Damia or her numerous imitators, the theatre itself being only
an aspect of a richer spectacle, for the street in which it stood, almost
unique, even for Paris, was an endless passing show. And die Grand
Guignol ! From hair-raising melodramas to the most riotous farces,
all on one bill, with well-timed stampedes to the bar, a dream of
a bar, hidden avray in the lobby. But of all these strange, other-
worldly memories, the best is of the Cirque Mcdrano. A world of

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

transmogrification. A world as old as civilization itself, one might
say. For, certainly before the theatre, before the puppet show and
the shadow play, there must have been the cirque intime with its
saltimbanques, jongleurs, acrobats, sword swallowers, equestrians
and clowns.

But to get back to that year 191 3, in San Diego, where I heard
Emma Goldman lecture on the European drama . . . Can it
possibly be that long ago ? I ask myself. I was on my way to a
whorehouse in company with a cowboy named Bill Parr firom
Montana. We were working together on a fruit ranch near Chula
Vista and every Saturday evening we went to town for that one
purpose. How strange to think that I was deflected, derouted, my
whole hfe altered, by the chance encounter with a billboard
announcing the arrival of Emma Goldman and Ben Reitman !
Through her, Emma, I came to read such playwrights as Wedekind,
Hauptmann, Schnitzler, Brieux, d*Aimunzio, Strindberg, Gals-
worthy, Pinero, Ibsen, Gorky, Werfel, von Hof!mansthaI,
Sudermann, Yeats, Lady Gregory, Chekov, Andreyev, Hermann
Bahr, Walter Hasenclever, Ernst Toller, Tolstoy and a host of
others. (It was her consort, Ben Reitman, who sold me the fir^t
book of Neitzsche*s that I was to read — The Anti-Christ — as well as
The Ego and His Own by Max Stimer.) Then and there my world
was altered.

When, a Uttle later, I began going to the Washington Square
Players and the Theatre Guild, I became acquainted with more
European dramatists — the Capek brothers, Georg Kaiser, Pirandello,
Lord Dunsany, Benavente, St. John Ervine, as well as such Americans
as Eugene O'Neill, Sidney Howard and Elmer Rice.

Out of this period there emerges the name of an actor who came
originally from the Yiddish theatre— Jacob Ben-Ami. Like Nazi-
mova, he had something indescribable. For years his voice and
gestures haunted me. He was like a figure out of the Old Testament.
But which figure ? I could never place him exactly. It was after
one of his performances in some Htde theatre that a group of us
repaired one night to a Hungarian restaurant where, after the other
patrons had left, we closed the doors and listened till dawn to a
pianist whose whole repertoire was Scriabin. These two names —
Scriabin and Ben-Ami — are indissolubly connected in my mind.
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Just as the title of Hamsun's novel, Mystcrium (in German), is
associated with another Jew, a Yiddish writer named Nahoum
Yood. Whenever, wherever I met Nahoum Yood, he would
begin talking about this mad book of Hamsun's. Similarly, in
Paris, whenever I spent an evening with Hans Reichel, the painter,
we would inevitably touch on Ernst Toller whom he had befriended
and on whose account he had been thrown into prison by the
Germans.

Whenever I think or hear of The Cmcit whenever I encounter
the names Schiller and Goethe, whenever I sec the word Renais-
sance (always connected with Walter Pater's book on the subject),
I think of subway or elevated trains, either hanging on to a strap
or standing on the platform looking down into dirty windows of
filthy, woe-begonc hovels, whilst committing to memory long
passages from the works of these authors. Nor does it ever cease
to seem remarkable to me that almost every day of my Hfe, on
entering the forest dose by, where I strike an open glade, a golden
glade, my mind immediately runs to those far-off performances of
Maeterlinck's plays — Tlte Death of Tintagiles, The Blue Bird, Monna
VantWy or else of the opera, PelUas et Melisande, the settings of which,
almost as much as the music, have never ceased to haunt me.

It is the women of the theatre who seem to have left the greatest
impression upon me, whether because of their great beauty, their
singular pcrsonaUties or their extraordinary voices.* Perhaps this
is due to the fact that in everyday life women have so Httle chance
to reveal themselves completely. Perhaps, too, the drama tends to
enhance the roles played by women. Modem drama is saturated
with social problems, thereby reducing woman to a more human
level. In ancient Greek drama the women are superhuman : no
modem has ever met such types in real Hfe. In the Elizabethan
drama they are also of startling proportions, not godlike, certainly,
but of such magnification as to terrify and bewilder us. To get the
fiill measure of woman one has to combine the properties of the
female as given in ancient drama with those which only the burlesque
theatre (in our time) has dared to reveal. I am alluding, of course,

* Pauline Lord's voice, for example, in Anna Christie : " O God, I am
only a poor bum I "—or the voice of Ludcnne Lcmarchand, the French
actress, m Dommage qu'elle soit putain ! Or our own dear Margo's.

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to those so-called " degrading " comic bits in burlesque which
derive from the commedia del' arte of the Middle Ages.

Since reading the life of de Sade, who spent some of his closing
years at the insane asylum at Charenton, where he amused himself
writing and directing plays for the inmates, I have often wondered
what it would be like to wimess the performance of a group of
insane people. At the root of Artaud's ideas on the theatre was
the thought of having the players so work upon the audience (with
the aid of all manner of external devices) that the spectators would
literally go mad and, participating with the actors in a frenzy of
delirium, carry the drama to real and unthinkable excesses.

One thing about the theatre which has always impressed me is
its power to overcome national and racial barriers. A few plays
given by a group of foreign actors interpreting their native dramatists
can do more, I have observed, than a cartload of books. Often
the first reactions are anger, resentment, deception or disgust.
But once the virus takes, what was absurd, preposterous, utterly
aUen, becomes accepted and approved, nay, enthusiastically
endorsed. America has received wave after wave of such foreign
influences, always to the betterment of our own native drama.
But, hke foreign cuisines, these infusions never seem to last. The
American theatre remains within its own hmited bounds, despite all
the shocks which are administered to it from time to time.

Ah, but let me not overlook that strange figure, David Belasco !
About the time that my father added Frank Harris to his list of
customers, thanks to his son's interest in literature, there came
one day to the tailor shop this sombre, priest-Uke individual with
dark, magnetic charm, who, like a clergyman, wore his collar
backwards, who dressed always in black, yet was thoroughly aUve,
sensual, glowing, almost feline in his gestures and movements.
David Belasco ! A name that Broadway will ever remember.
He was not my father's customer but the cHent of one of my father's
associates, a man named Erwin, who was mad about two things
— boats and paintings. There were at that time four prominent
figures — permanent fixtures, so to say — connected with the tailor
shop ; Bunchek, the cutter, this man Erwin, Rente, a sort of dereUct
boss tailor, and Chase, another boss tailor. No four men could differ
more from one another than these did. Each one was an eccentric,
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aiid each one, with the exception of Bimchek, had his very personal
and very pecuUar assortment of customers — not many either, a
mere handful, indeed, but sufficient, apparently, to keep them aUve.
Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say—" partially alive."
Hal Chase, for example, who was from Maine and a Yankee to the
core, a cantankerous one too, eked out the remainder of his income
by playing billiards in the evening. Erwin, who was crazy about
his "yacht" and always fretting because his customers failed to
show up on time, thus preventing him from heading for Sheeps-
head Bay where his boat lay at anchor — Erwin made little sums
on the side by taking guests out for a sail. As for poor Rente, he
had none of the mad or rash quaUties of these two ; his solution
was to work nights in a wealthy club, making sandwiches and
serving beer and brandy to the card players. But what they all
had in common was their propensity for dreaming Hfe away.
The greatest boon life offered for Chase was to duck out at noon
— twelve sharp, if possible — and head for Coney Island or Rock-
away Beach, where he would spend the entire afternoon swimming
and baking himself in the broiling sun. He was a bom storyteller,
with a sort of Sherwood Anderson gift for hemming and hawing,
but he was so damned full of character, so cocksure, so argumenta-
tive, so pugnacious, so bull-headed, so eternally right, that he made
himself obnoxious to every one, his customers included. As for
these latter, his attitude was ** take it or leave it." Erwin likewise.
They gave their cHents just one fitting ; if that didn't suit, they
could go elsewhere. Which they usually did. Nevertheless, because
of their eccentric natures, because of their peculiar, odd associates
and the milieus in which they traveled, because of the language
they talked, the figures they cut, they were constantly picking up
new clients and often most astonishing ones. Belasco, as I said, was
one of Er win's customers. What these two men had in common
I never could tell. Nothing, apparently. Sometimes my father's
customers would collide with the customers of these other boss
tailors as they were leaving the dressing room. General astonish-
ment on the part of all. Many of my father's customers, as I have
recounted in Black Spring, were his cronies, or became his cronies,
through frequent meetings at the bar across the street. Some of
them, men of parts (a number of them celebrated actors), found

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themselves delightfully at home in the back room of the tailor shop.
Some of them were astute enough to engage Bunchek in conversa-
tion or argument, drawing him out about Zionism, the Yiddish
poets and playwrights, the Kabbala, and such topics. Many an
afternoon, when it seemed as if the combined cUentele of the estab-
lishment had utterly died away, we whilcd away the weary hours
at Bunchek's cutting table, discussing the most unheard of problems,
religious, metaphysical, zodiacal and cosmological. Thus, Siberia,
when I hear the word, is not the name of a vast, frozen tundra,
but the name of a play by Jacob Gordin. Theodor Herzl, the father
of Zionism, is even more of a father to me than the hatchet-faced
George Washington.

One of the most beloved individuals who frequented the shop
was a customer of my father's named Julian I'Estrange, who was
then married to Constance Collier, the star of Peter Ihhetson. To
hear Julian and Paul — ^Paul Poindcxter — discussing the merits of
Sheridan's plays or the histrionic virtues of Marlowe and Webster,
for example, was almost hke listening to JuHan the Apostate versus
Paul of Tarsus. Or then, as sometimes happened, to hear Bunchek
(who caught their lingo only dimly and confusedly) disparage
their talk, he who knew not a word of Sheridan, Marlowe, Webster,
or even Shakespeare, was like turning on Fats Waller after a session
at a Christian Science meeting room. Or, to top it all, listening to
Chase, Rente, Erwin, Inc., tail oflf into their respective monologues
on their respective, obsessive trivia. The whole atmosphere of the
place was redolent of drink, discussion and dream. Each one was
itching to retire into his own private world, a world, need I say it,
which had absolutely nothing to do with tailoring. It was as if
God, in his perverse way, had created them all tailors against their
will But it was just this atmosphere which gave me the necessary
preparation for egress into the bizarre and tmfathomable world
of the solitary male, gave me strange, premature and premonitory
notions of character, of passions, pursuits, vices, folUes, deeds and
intentions. Was it so extraordinary, therefore, that observing me
with a book of Nietzsche's under my arm one day, the good Paul
Poindextcr should take me aside and give me a long lecture on
Marcus AureUus and Epictetus, whose works I had aheady read
but dared not admit, because I hadn't the heart to let Paul down.
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And Belasco ? I almost forgot about him. Belasco was always
silent as a hermit. A silence which inspired respect rather than
reverence. But this I do remember vividly about him — that I
helped him on and oflf with his trousers. And I remember the
illuminated smile he always gave in return for this Httle service :
it was like receiving a hundred-dollar tip.

But before winding up the tailor shop I must say a word or two
about the newspaper columnists of that day. You sec, if clients
were sometimes scarce, drummers were always plentiful. Not a day
passed but three or four of them dropped in, not in hopes of taking
an order, but to rest their weary bones, to chew the rag in friendly
fashion. After they had discussed the news of the day they fastened
on the columnists. The two reigning favorites were Don Marquis
and Bob Edgren. Oddly enough, Bob Edgren, a sports writer,
had a great influence upon me. I sincerely beHeve I am telling the
truth when I say that it was through reading Bob Edgren*s daily
column that I cultivated what sense of fair play I have. Edgren
gave every man his due ; after weighing all the pros and cons he
would give his man the benefit of the doubt. I saw in Bob Edgren
a sort of mental and moral referee. He was as much a part of my
Me then as Walter Pater, Barbey d'Aurevilly or James Branch
Cabell. It was a period, of course, when I went frequently to the
ringside, when I spent whole evenings with my pals discussing the
relative merits of the various masters of fisticuffs. Almost my first
idols were prizefighters. I had a whole pantheon of my own,
which included among others such figures as Terry McGovem,
Tom Sharkey, Joe Cans, Jim Jeffries, Ad Wolgast, Joe Rivers,
Jack Johnson, Stanley Ketchel, Benny Leonard, Georges Carpentier
and Jack Dempsey. Ditto for the wrestlers. Litde Jim Londos
was almost as much of a god to me as Hercules was for the Greeks.
And then there were the six-day bike riders . . . Stop !

What I mean to point out by all this is that the reading of books,
the going to plays, the heated discussions we waged, the sports
contests, the banquets indoors and out, the musical fiestas (our own
and those provided by the masters), were all merged and blended
into one continuous, uninterrupted activity. On the way to the
arena in Jersey the day of the Dempsey-Carpentier battle — an event,
incidentally, almost equal in importance for us to the heroic, single-

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handed combats beside the walls of Troy — I remember discussing
with my companion, a concert pianist, the contents, style and
significance o{ Penguin Island and the Revolt of the Angels. A few years
later, in Paris, while reading La Guerre de Troie naura pas lieuy I
suddenly recalled this black day when I witoessed the sad defeat
of my favorite, Carpentier. Again, in Greece, on the island of
Corfu, reading the Iliad, or trying to — for it went against the grain
— ^but anyhow, reading of Achilles, the mighty Ajax, and all the
other heroic figures on one side or the other, I thought again of the
beautiful godlike figure of Georges Carpentier, I saw him wilt and
crumple, sink to the canvas under the crushing, sledgehammer
blows of the Manassa mauler. It occurred to me then that his defeat
was just as stunning, just as vivid, as the death of a hero or a demi-
god. And with this thought came recollections of Hamlet, Lohen-
grin, and the other legendary figures whom Jules Laforgue had
recreated in his inimitable style. Why ? Why ? But thus are books
confounded with the events and deeds of life.

From eighteen to twenty-one or twenty-two, the period when
the Xerxes Society flourished, it was a continuous round of feast-
ing, drinking, play-acting, music-making (** I am a fine musician,
I travel round the world ! "), broad farce and tall horseplay. There
wasn't a foreign restaurant in New York which we did not patronize.
Chez Bousquet, a French restaurant in the roaring Forties, we were
so well liked, the twelve of us, that when they closed the doors
the place was ours. (O fiddledee, O fiddledee, O fiddledum-dum-
dee !) And all the while I was reading my head off. I can still
recall the titles of those books I used to carry about under my arm,
no matter where I was headed : Anathema, Chekov's Short Stories,
The Devil's Dictionary, the complete Rabelais, the Satyricon, Lecky's
History of European Morals, With Walt in Camden, Westermarck*s
History of Human Marriage, The Scientific Bases of Optimism, The
Riddle of the Universe, The Conquest of Bread, Draper's History of the
Intellectual Development of Europe, the Song of Songs by Sudermann,
Volpone, and such-like. Shedding tears over the " convulsive beauty "
of Francesca da Rimini, memorizing bits of Minna von Barnhelm
(just as later, in Paris, I will memorize the whole of Strindberg's
famous letter to Gauguin, as given in Avant et Apres), struggling
with Hermann und Dorothea (a gratuitous struggle, because I had
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wrestled with it for a whole year in school), marveling over the
exploits of Benvenuto Cellini, bored with Marco Polo, dazed by
Herbert Spencer's First Principles, fascinated by everything from
the hand of Henri Fabre, plugging away at Max Mailer's ** philo-
logistica," moved by the quiet, lyrical charm of Tagore's poetic
prose, studying the great Finnish epic, trying to get through the
Mahabarrhata, dreaming with Olive Schreiner in South Africa,
reveling in Shaw's prefaces, flirting with MoUere, Sardou, Scribe,
de Maupassant, fighting my way through the Rougon-Macquart
series, wading through that useless book of Voltaire's — Zadig . . .
What a hfe ! Small wonder I never became a merchant tailor.
(Yet thrilled to discover that The Merchant Tailor was the title of
a well-known Elizabethan play.) At the same time — and is this
not more wonderful, more bizarre ? — carrying on a kind of
"vermouth duckbill" talk with such cronies as George Wright,
Bill Dewar, Al Burger, Connie Grimm, Bob Haase, Charhe Sul-
Hvan, Bill Wardrop, Georgie GifFord, Becker, Steve Hill, Frank
Carroll— all good members of the Xerxes Society. Ah, what was
that atrociously naughty play we all went to see one Saturday
afternoon in a famous httle theatre on Broadway ? What a great
good time we had, we big boobies ! A French play it was, of course,
and all the rage. So daring ! So risque ! And what a night we made
of it afterwards at Bousquet's !

Those were the days, drunk or sober, I always rose at five a.m.
sharp to take a spin on my Bohemian racing wheel to Coney Island
and back. Sometimes, skeetering over the thin ice of a dark winter
morning, the fierce wind carrying me along like an iceboat, I would
be shaking with laughter over the events of the night before— just
a few hours before, to be exact. This, the Spartan regime, combined
with the feasts and festivities, the one-man study course, the pleasure
reading, the argument and discussions, the clowning and buffoonery,
the fights and wrestling bouts, the hockey games, the six-day races
at the Garden, the low dance halls, the piano-playing and piano
teaching, the disastrous love affairs, the perpetual lack of money,
the contempt for work, the goings-on in the tailor shop, the soHtary
promenades to the reservoir, to the cemetery (Chinese), to the duck
pond where, if the ice were thick enough, I would try out my racing
skates — this unilateral, multilingual, sesquipedaHan activity night

313

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

and day, morning, noon and night, in season and out, drunk or
sober, or drunk and sober, always in the crowd, always milling
around, always searching, struggling, prying, peeping, hoping,
trying, one foot forward, two feet backward, but on, on, on, com-
pletely gregarious yet utterly soHtary, the good sport and at the same
time thoroughly secretive and lonely, the good pal who never had
a cent but could always borrow somehow to give to others, a
gambler but never gambUng for money, a poet at heart and a
wastrel on the surface, a mixer and a clinker, a man not above pan-
handling, the friend of all yet really nobody's friend, well . . .
there it was, a sort of caricature of Elizabethan times, all gathered
up and played out in the shabby purUeus of Brooklyn, Manhattan
and the Bronx, the foulest city in the world, this place I sprang
from* — a cheese-box of frineral parlors, museums, opera houses,
concert halls, armories, churches, saloons, stadiums, carnivals,
circuses, arenas, markets Gansevoort and Wallabout, stinking
Gowanus canal, Arabian ice cream parlors, ferry houses, dry docks,
sugar refineries. Navy Yard, suspension bridges, roller skating rinks.
Bowery flophouses, opium dens, gambling joints, Chinatown,
Roumanian cabarets, yellow journals, open trolley cars, aquariums,
Saengerbunds, tum-vereins, newsboys' homes. Mills' hotels, peacock
alley lobbies, the Zoo, the Tombs, the Zeigfeld Follies, the Hippo-
drome, the Greenwich Village dives, the hot spots of Harlem, the
private homes of my fiiends, of the girb I loved, of the men I
revered — in Greenpoint, Williamsburg, Columbia Heights, Erie
Basin — the endless gloomy streets, the gasHghts, the fat gas tanks,
the throbbing, colorfiil ghetto, the docks and wharves, the big ocean
liners, the banana freighters, the gun boats, the old abandoned
forts, the old desolate Dutch streets. Pomander Walk, Patchin
Place, United States Street, the curb market. Perry's drug store
(hard by the Brooklyn Bridge — ^such frothy, milky ice cream
sodas !), the open trolley to Sheepshead Bay, the gay Rockaways,
the smell of crabs, lobsters, clams, baked blue fish, fried scallops,

* " Ah ! blissful and never-to-be-forgotten age ! when everything -wis
better than it has ever been since, or ever will be again — when Buttermilk
Channel was quite dry at low water — when the shad in the Hudson were all
salmon, and when the moon shone with a pure and resplendent whiteness,
instead of that melancholy yellow Ught which is the consequence of her
sickening at the abominations she every night witnesses in this degenerate
dty ! " (Washington Irving.)

314

THE THEATRE

the schooner of beer for five cents, the free lunch counters, and
somewhere, anywhere, every old where, always one of Andrew
Carnegie's " pubUc " Hbraries, the books you so passionately wanted
always " out ** or not listed, or labelled, like Henncssy*s whiskies
and brandies, with three stars. No, they were not the days of old
Athens, nor the days and nights of Rome, nor the murderous,
froHcsome days of Elizabethan England, nor were they even the
"good old 'Nineties " — but it was " httle ole Manhattan "just the
same, and the name of that little old theatre I'm trying so hard to
remember is just as famiHar to me as the Breslin Bar or Peacock
Alley, but it won t come back, not now. But it was there ottce,
all the theatres were there, all the grand old actors and actresses,
including the hams such as Corse Payton, David Warfield, Robert
Mantell, as well as the man my father loathed, his namesake, Henry
Miller. They still stand, in memory at least, and with them the
days long past, the plays long since digested, the books, some of
them, still unread, the critics still to be heard from. (" Turn back
the universe and give me yesterday / ")

And now, just as I am closing shop for the day, it comes to me,
the name of the theatre ! Wallack's ! Do you remember it i You
see, if you give up struggling (memoria-technica) it always comes
back to you. Ah, but I see it again now, just as it once was, the
dingy old temple facade of the theatre. And with it I see the poster
outside. Shure, and if it wasn't— T/j« Girl from Rector's ! So naughty!
So daring! So risqu6!

A sentimental note to close, but what matter > I was going to
speak of the plays I had read, and I see I have hardly touched on
them. They seemed so important to me once, and important they
undoubtedly were. But the plays I laughed through, wept through,
lived through, are more important still, though they were of lesser
cahbre. For then I was with others, with my friends, my pak, my
buddies. Stand up, O ancient members of the Xerxes Society!
Stand up, even if your feet are in the grave! I must give you a
parting salute. I must tell you one and all how much I loved you,
how often I have thought of you since. May we all be reunited in
the beyond!

We were all such fine musicians, O fiddlcdce, O fiddledee, O fiddle-
dum-dum-dee!

315

THE BOOKS IN MY LIFE

And now I take leave of that young man sitting alone upstain
in the lugubrious parlor reading the Classics. What a dismal picture!
What could he have done with the Classics, had he succeeded in
swallowing them ? The Classics! Slowly, slowly, I am coming to
them — not by reading them, but by making them. Where I join
with the ancestors, with my, your, our glorious predecessors, is
on the field of the cloth of gold. Bref, daily life . . . Voltaire,
though you are not precisely a classic, you gave me nothing, neither
with your Zadig, nor with your Candide. And why pick on that
miserable, vinegar-bitten skeleton. Monsieur Arouet ? Because it
suits me at this moment. I could name twelve hundred different
duds and dunderheads who likewise gave me nothing. I could let
out a petarade. To what end ? To indicate, to signify, to asseverate
and adjudicate that, whether drunk or sober, whether with roller
skates or without, whether with bare fists or six-ounce gloves, life
comes first. Oui, en terminant ce fatras, d*^v^nements de ma pure
jeunesse, je pense de nouveau a Cendrars. De la musique avant
toute chose! Mais, que donne mieux la musique de la vie que la vie
elle-meme ?

January to December, 1950,
Bug Stir, California.

316

Author

Abelard, Pierre
Alain-Foumier
Andersen, Hans Christian
Anonymous
Balzac, Honore de

Bellamy, Edward
Belloc, Hilaire
Blavatsky, Mme. H. P.
Boccaccio, Giovanni
Breton, Andre
Bronte, Emily
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward
Carroll, Lewis
Celine, Louis-Ferdinand
Cellini, Benvenuto
Cendrars, Blaise
Chesterton, G. K.
Conrad, Joseph
Cooper, James Fenimore
Defoe, Daniel
De Nerval, G<$rard

APPENDIX I

The Hundred Books Which Ittfluenced Me Most*
Title

Ancient Greek Dramatists

Arabian Nights Entertainment
(for children)

Elizabethan Playwrights (ex-
cepting Shakespeare)

European Playwrights of the
Nineteenth Century, includ-
ing Russian and Irish

Greek Myths and Legends

Knights of King Arthur's Court

Tite Story of My Misfortunes

The Wanderer

Fairy Tales

Diary of a Lost One

Seraphita

Louis Lambert

Looking Backward

The Path to Rome

The Secret Doctrine

The Decameron

Nadja

Wuthering Heights

The Last Days of Pompeii

Alice in Wonderland

Journey to the End of the Night

Autobiography

Virtually the complete works

St. Francis of Assisi

His works in general

The Leatherstocking Tales

Robinson Crusoe

His works in general

* This list appeared in Pour Une Bibliothique Wale; Editions Gallimard,
Paris, 195 1.

317

APPENDIX I

Author

Dostoievsky, Feodor
Dreiser, Theodore
Diihamel, Georges
Du Maurier, George
Dumas, Alexander
Eckermann, Johann Peter
Eltzbacher, Paul
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
Fabre, Henri
Faurc, EUe
Fenollosa, Ernest

Gidc, Andi6
Giono, Jean

Grimm, The Brothers
Gutkind, Erich
Haggard, Rider
Hamsun, Knut
Henty, G. A.
Hesse, Hermann
Hudson, W. H.
Hugo, Victor
Huysmans, Joris Karl
Joyce, James
Keyscrling, Hermann
Kropotkin, Peter
Lao-tse

Latzko, Andreas
Long, Haniel
M.

Machen, Arthur
Maeterlinck, Maurice
Mann, Thomas
Mencken, H. L.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Nijinsky, Vaslav
NordhofF& Hall
Nostradamus
Peck, George Wilbur
Percival, W. O.
Petronius
Plutarch
318

Title

His works in general

Salavin Series

Trilby

The Three Musketeers

Conversations with Goethe

Anarchism

Representative Men

His works in eeneral

The History of Art

The Chinese Written Character

as a Medium for Poetry
Dostoievski
Refits d'Ob^issance
Que majoie demeure
Jean te Bleu
Fairy Tales

The Absolute Collective
She

His works in general
His works in general
Siddhartha

His works in general
Les Miserables
Against the Grain
Ulysses

South American Meditations
Mutual Aid
Tao Teh Ch*ing
Men in War

Interlinear to Caheza de Vaca
Gospel of Ramakrishna
The Hill of Dreams
His works in general
The Magic Mountain
Prejudices

His works in general
Diary

Pitcairn Island
The Centuries
Pedes Bad Boy

William Blake's Circle of Destiny
The Satyricon
Lives

APPENDIX

Author

Powys, John Cowper
Prescott, William H.

Proust, Marcel
Rabelais, Francois
Rimbaud, Jean-Arthur
Rolland, Romain

Rudhyar, Dane
Saltus, Edgar
Scott, Sir Walter
Sicnkicwicz, Henry
Sikelianos, Anghclos

Sinnett, A. P.
Spencer, Herbert
Spengler, Oswald
Strindberg, August
Suar^s, Carlo
Suzuki, Daisetz Teitaro
Swift, Jonathan
Tennyson, Alfred
Thoreau, Henry David

Twain, Mark
Van Gogh, Vincent
Wassermann, Jacob
Weigall, Ardiur
Welch, Galbraith
Werfel, Franz
Whitman, Walt

Title

Visions and Revisions
Conquest of Mexico
Peru

Remembrance of Things Past
Garguanta and Pantagmel
His works in general
Jean Christophe
Prophets or the New India
Astrology of Personality
The Imperial Purple
Ivanhoe
Quo Vadis
Proanakrousma (in manuscript,

translated)
Esoteric Buddhism ^^
Autobiography
The Decline of the West
The Inferno
Krishnamurti
Zen Buddhism
Gulliver^s Travels
Idylls of the King
Civil Disobedience and Other

Essays
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Letters to Theo
The Maurizius Case (Trilogy)
Akhnaton

The Unveiling of Timbuctoo
Star of the Unborn
Leaves of Grass

319

APPENDIX II

Books I Still Intend to Read

Author

Anonymous

Aquinas, Thomas

Aragon, Louis

Bonaparte, Napoleon

Calas, Nicholas

Casanova, Giacomo Giralamo

Chestov, Leon

Cleland, Dr. John

Dc Gourmont, R^my

De la Bretonne, Restif

De Laclos, Choderlos
De Lafayette, Madame
De Sade, Marquis

Dickens, Charles
Doughty, Charles
Fielding, Henry
Flaubert, Gustavc
Gibbon, Edward

Harrison, Jane

Hugo, Victor

Huizinga, H.

James, Henry

Maturin, Charles

Michelet, Jules

Multatuli

RadchfFe, Ann Ward

Piviere, Jacques & Alain-Fournier

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

Stendhal

SuUivan, Louis

Swift, Jonathan

Vach^, Jacques

Title

My Secret Life

Summa Theologica

Le Paysan de Paris

Memoirs

Foyers d'Incendie

Memoirs

Athenes et Jerusalem

Memoirs of Fanny Hill

Le Latin Mystique

Monsieur Nicholas

Les Nuits de Paris

Dangerous Acquaintances

The Princess ofCleves

The Hundred and Twenty Days

of Sodom
Pickwick Papers
Arabia Deserta
Tom Jones

Sentimental Education
Tlie Decline and Fall of the

Roman Empire
The Orphic Myths
Prolegomena
Toilers of the Sea
The Waning of the Middle Ages
The Golden Bowl
Melmoth the Wanderer
History oftlie French Revolution
Max Havelaar
The Mysteries of Udolpho
Correspondence
Entile

La Chartreuse de Parme
The Autobiography of an Idea
Letters to Stella
Lettres de Guerre

And the works of the following authors :— Jean-Paul Richter,
Novalis, Croce, Toynbee, Leon Bloy, Orage, Federov, Leon Daudet,
Gerard Manley Hopkins, T. F. Powys, Ste. Ther^e, St. John of
the Cross.

320

APPENDIX III

Ben Abramson

Graham Ackroyd

Dr. Bruno Adrian!

Heinz Albers

Bruce Arliss

WiUiam E. Auk

Oscar Baradinsky

Rene Barjavel

Roland Bartell

Richard Beesley

Dr. Pierre BeUcard

Hilary Belloc

Raoul Bertrand

Earl Blankinship

Andre Breton

Robert A. Campbell

Robert H. Carlock

Blaise Cendrars

J. Rives Childs

Hugh Chisholm

Cyril Connolly

Albert Cossery

Pascal Covici

Frau Elisabeth Dibbem

Lawrence Durrell

Jean Dutourd

David F. Edgar

Frank Elgar

Pete Fenton

Robert Finkelstein

J.H.Flagg

Mme. Genevieve Fondane

Wallace FowUe

John Gildersleeve

Jean Giono

Maurice Girodias

Raymond Gu&in

Jac. de Haan

E. Haldeman-JuHus

Lars Gustav Hellstrom

Walter Holscher

Andrew Horn

Willard Hougland

Friends Who Supplied Me With Books :

Mohegan Lake, New York
Sticklepath, England
Carmel, California
Hamburg, Germany
Monterey, CaUfornia
Phoenix, Arizona
Yonkers, New York
Paris, France
Monterey, California
Hollywood, California
Lyons, France
SausaUto, CaUfornia
Paris, France
Seattle, Washington
Paris, France
Kankakee, Illinois
Tucson, Arizona
Paris, France
Jidda, Saudi Arabia
Big Sur, CaHfornia
London, England
Paris, France

New York City, New York
Ohrigen, Germany
^ Belgrade, Yugoslavia
London, England
Spring Valley, New York
Paris, France
Los Angeles, CaUfornia
Los Angeles, CaUfornia
Chicago, Illinois
Paris, France
Bennington, Vermont
Sacramento, CaUfornia
Manosque, France
Paris, France
Bordeaux, France
The Hague, HoUand
Girard, Kansas
Solna, Sweden
Hollywood, California
Los Angeles, CaUfornia
Santa Fe, New Mexico

321

APPENDIX III

Claude Houghton

Louisa Jenkins

JohnKidis

Pierre Laleure

James Laughlin

Janko Lavrin

Mme. H. Lc Boterf

George Leite

Pierre Lesdain

Dr. Michael Lubtchansky

Pierre Mabille

Albert MaiUet

Rose K. Margoshes

J. H. Masui

Gregory Mason

Katnryn Mecham

H. L. Mermoud

Albert Mermoud

Sheldon Messingcr

H.W. Mediorstjr.

Maurice Nadeau

Gilbert Neiman

Swami Nikhilananda

Stan Noyes

Maud Oakes

Hugh O'Neill

Gordon Onslow-Ford

Kenneth Patchen

Alfred Perl^

David Peery

Lawrence Clark Powell

John Cowper Powys

Raymond Queneau

Paul Radin

Rajagopal

Man Ray

Georges Ribemont-Dessaignes

John Rodker

Harrydick and LiUian Bos Ross

Andr6 Rousseaux

James S. Russell

Mrs. Mark Saunders

Tawfig Sayigh

Bezalel Schatz

Dr. Olga Schatz

322

London, England
Pebble Beach, California
Sacramento, California
Paris, France
Norfolk, Connecticut
Nottingham, England
Paris, France
Berkeley, California
Brussek, Belgium
Paris, France
Paris, France
Viennc, France
New York City, New York
Paris, France

New York City, New York
Chicago, Illinois
Lausanne, Switzerland
Lausanne, Switzerland
Los Angeles, California
Graveland, Holland
Paris, France
Denver, Colorado
New York City, New York
Berkeley, California
Big Sur, California
Big Sur, CaUfomia
SausaUto, California
Old Lyme, Connecticut
London, England
Los Angeles, California
Los Angeles, California
Corwcn, Wales
Paris, France
Berkeley, California
Ojai, California
Hollywood, Cahfomia
Saint-Jeannet, France
London, England
Big Sur, California
Paris, France
Inverness, California
Carmel, California
Beirut, Lebanon
Big Sur, California
Berkeley, California

APFBNDIX I

W. Schild

J. H. W. Schlamildi
Emil Schnellock
Pierre Seghers
Henri S^guy
Jack W. Stauffadicr
Frances Steloff
Ruth Stephan
Irving Stettner
Carlo Suar^
W. T. Symons
Richard Thoma
Gny Tosi
Ckura Urquhart
Jean Varda
Boris Vieren
Alexander Victor
Mme. Jean Voiher
Robert Vospef
Kurt Wagenseil
Alan W. Watts
Herbert F. West
Emil White
Walker Winsk>w
Bemhard Wolfe
Kurt Wolff
Jacob Yerushalmy
Dante T. Ziaccagnini

Lausanne, Switzerland
Utrecht, Holland
Fredericksborg, Virginia
Paris, France
Sarlat, France
San Francisco, Cabfomia
New York City, New York
Westport, Connecticut
Paris, France
Paris, France
London, England
Limona, Florida
Paris, France

Johannesburg, South Africa
SausaHto, Califomia
Carmel, Cahfomia
Carmel, Cahfomia
Paris, France
Los Angeles, Califomia
Stamberg a/See, Germany
Evanston, Illinois
Hanover, New Hampshire
Big Sur, Califomia
Topeka, Kansas
New York City, New York
New York City, New York
Berkeley, Califomia
Port Chester. New York

323

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